“Yellow tiger,” she said, and frowned.
I nodded.
“The yellow clan has been dead for centuries. They do not exist.”
“She was an animal to call for a really old vampire.”
“What happened to her?” Paula asked.
“She’s dead.”
“You had to kill her.”
I nodded.
“But a yellow tiger attacked you,” she said.
“You say it like that makes a difference. What difference does it make what color tiger attacked me?”
“The yellow, or golden, clan was supreme to all the other clans. They ruled the earth and all the energies on it, including the rest of the clans.”
“News to me,” I said.
She shrugged as much as the chains would let her. “What good does it do to talk about something that is lost? But if a yellow tiger attacked you, then it might explain why you seem to have so much power.”
“She was yellow,” I said. I turned to Edward.
He knew what I wanted without my having to say anything. “She was pale yellow with darker stripes.”
“You were there?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Was anyone else attacked?” she asked.
“Yes, but he tests clean for lycanthropy. I’m the only one that got lucky.” Just standing next to her made it easier to breathe. Maybe the idea that I could travel without my own cadre of wereanimals was just not true. Maybe I’d never be able to travel alone. Shit. If that were true, I might have to give up the federal badge anyway. What good was an executioner who couldn’t travel to where the bad guys were committing their crimes?
The intercom sounded again. “The other tigers are calm again. What are you doing in there, Blake?” It was Shaw, just like I’d known it would be. I was sorry his wife had run off and shacked up with a shapeshifter, but it wasn’t my fault.
Edward went to the intercom on our side and spoke. “We got the tiger energy toned down, that’s all.”
“What’s Blake doing?” Shaw asked.
“Her job,” Edward said, and let go of the button.
I looked into those strangely soothing tiger eyes in the woman’s face. “Did you know what Martin was involved in?”
She blinked up at me. Her face told me nothing, but her lips parted, her breath a little faster. Was that because she knew something, or because I mentioned her boyfriend? Or was it just being in cuffs from top to bottom and being questioned by the police? That tends to make people nervous, even overreact. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to question people at home or some place more casual. But it was too late for casual today. Too late for so many things.
I was staring into her eyes as she said, “No.” I didn’t believe her. I wasn’t sure why, but looking into those pale blue kitty-cat eyes, I knew she was lying. It wasn’t metaphysical powers. It was the same gut reaction that any cop gets after a while. You just begin to know. Now, maybe she wasn’t lying to hide something. Maybe she was lying because she was scared, or just because she could. People lie for the stupidest reasons. But I went with her lying to hide something. She was lying because she had information we needed. That was helpful. That gave us somewhere to go and someone to question. That gave us something useful for all the new deaths I’d seen today. If Paula Chu knew something, then maybe the officers who’d died, and the SWAT who was in critical condition in the hospital . . . Maybe it all wouldn’t have been for nothing.
I realized, staring down into her lying eyes, that I no longer believed that. Even if she knew everything, the fucking secret to the secret sauce, and would tell us all of it, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to the families of the slain officers. It didn’t matter to the member of SWAT who might never walk again, if he even woke up. That it mattered was a lie that we told ourselves so we could keep moving and not want to eat our gun.
Closure was a word therapists used to make you believe that the pain would stop, and that punishing the bad guy, or finding out why, would bring you peace. It was the biggest lie of all.
“Anita,” Edward said, “you all right?” He was closer to me than he had been, all the way on the side of the table with Paula and me. I hadn’t heard, felt, or seen him move.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not all right.” In my head I thought, I am off my game. What was wrong with me?
Edward took my arm and moved me back from the woman. The farther away, the clearer my head, but the tiger inside me was still there, crouched on the other side of the metal wall in my head. But she was lying down; only the end of that black-tipped tail twitching let me know how irritated she was with me.
The door opened and Chief Detective Ed Morgan came through smiling. He was playing those big brown eyes and those nice-guy good looks for all he was worth. He just radiated charm. Oh, right, we’d been waiting for him. Hadn’t Shaw warned us not to ask any questions directly related to the case until Morgan arrived? Guess he had. Fuck it.
“Good afternoon, Paula, may I call you Paula? I’m Ed.” He set files down on the table between them, took the chair I’d been sitting in, and smiled at her. You’d have thought Edward and I didn’t exist.
“I can take it from here, Marshals. Undersheriff Shaw would like to speak with you.” Morgan smiled, broad enough to flash dimples, but in the depths of those brown eyes was an unfriendly spark. I thought we were going to get yelled at. Great.
Edward kept his grip on my arm, as if he didn’t trust what I’d do. If there’d been a mirror to look into, I’d have checked what my expression was, but there was nothing but walls. They didn’t have enough interrogation rooms with those big shiny two-way mirrored windows, so they’d put the woman in one where they couldn’t watch her as well. There was a camera on her, but she didn’t rate the window. She was the only one with a real connection to the dead weretiger, and she hadn’t rated the best room, though she now had one of their best interrogators. I smelled office politics.
Edward led me toward the still-open door. Whatever he saw or felt from me, or in me, was making him nervous. I didn’t feel that scary. I didn’t feel much of anything. Again, there was that little thought, What is wrong with me?
He eased me out the open door. I glanced back and found Paula Chu staring at me. The moment I met her eyes, the tigress in me stood up. She roared again, but this time the metal wall trembled with the sound, as if her roar had hit it like some huge gong. I staggered, and Edward had to steady me.
He leaned in and whispered, “What is wrong?”
“Not sure, but I need to get away from these tigers.”
Morgan said, “Close the door on your way out. Paula and I will get along just fine, won’t we?” He was turned away from us, but I knew he was wasting that brilliant smile on her. She didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were all for me.
I pushed through the door, and only Edward’s grip on my arm kept me from starting to run. My breathing was trying to speed up. My pulse was already racing. I could feel the other tigers inside the interrogation rooms. I could feel them. The only wereanimals I should have been able to feel like that were ones that I was metaphysically bound to, or that Jean-Claude was bound to. I was not close enough in any way to the white tigers of Vegas to sense them this strongly. Something was wrong.
Edward’s fingers dug into my arm. Dug in enough that I would have protested the pain, but it helped clear my head. A few bruises were worth it, and the moment the pain helped, I knew something else.
I whispered to him, “I’m being messed with.”
“Vampire?” He made it a question.
“Unless the white tiger queen can do shit that I’ve only seen vampires do before, yes.”
“Vamp or tiger?” he asked, voice low.
We were getting a few glances from the police officers we passed. Did they see the bruising grip, or the whispering? Or were the rumors so good that we’d just become a curiosity?
I glared at a couple of uniforms who were staring. “Like what you s
ee?”
“Leave it, Anita.” Edward just kept us moving past them. He loosened his grip on my arm a little, and instantly I could feel the tigers behind us in the rooms. I could almost see them looking up and trying to see me.
I leaned in, and whispered, “Tighten the grip.”
“What?”
“The pain helps keep my head clear.”
He went back to bruising my arm, and we kept walking toward the doors. I could see the press of the hot, white sunlight against the doors.
“If the sunlight helps . . .” he said.
I said, “Then it’s vampire.”
“If it doesn’t . . .” he said.
“Tiger,” I said.
He didn’t even bother to say yes. We both knew what we were doing, and why. Bernardo called from behind us, “Where’s the fire?”
Edward looked behind, but I didn’t. I had my eyes on the goal of the doors. I concentrated on the pressure of Edward’s fingers on my arm and the sunlight just ahead. He called back, “We need some air.” Bernardo, and Olaf if he was with him, would know that we weren’t moving that fast for a little air. It was the shorthand of people that knew each other. They knew Edward better than they knew me, but shorthand for him in that moment worked just dandy for all of us.
Bernardo and Olaf caught up with us as we got to the outer lobby area. Victor stood up from where he’d been sitting. The moment I saw him, the tigress in me roared again, and this time the metal shield that I’d built in her path wavered like metal water. It didn’t break, but it bent.
Edward didn’t even slow, but waved Victor off, and kept us heading for the door. Bernardo had the door open and waiting for us, as if he’d picked up on the urgency. Olaf trailed after all of us, not helping but not hindering, either. Right now, I’d take not hindering.
The tigress inside me leapt onto the warped metal and began to try to climb. “Hurry,” I said.
Edward pulled me through the doors. The heat hit me first, breath-stealing, like walking into an oven. The tiger didn’t hesitate. She wanted out.
Then the light hit me, and it was like some hot, white searchlight. It slashed through a darkness that I hadn’t been able to see. A darkness that held Her. She stood in the dark and shrieked at me. But the sunlight cut her off, and all I had to fight now was the weretiger that had managed to climb my shields and was running full tilt toward the surface of me. I didn’t know why Marmee Noir liked tigers so much, but she had done something to weaken my defenses.
I tried to put up another shield, and I couldn’t. Marmee Noir was gone for now, thrust out by the sun, but what she’d done inside me was still there. It was still crippling me.
Edward still had a light grip on my arm. “Anita, are you all right?”
“The vampire’s gone, but she’s done something to me.” The tiger was running full out, a blur of white and black; if she hit the surface of me, the least bad thing that was about to happen was I’d fall on the ground and almost change. Worst case, whatever Marmee had done to me would make me tiger for real.
“What has happened?” Olaf asked.
“I’ve got a better question, what is happening?” Bernardo asked.
If I’d had a wereleopard or a werewolf, or even a werelion, I could have distracted the tiger inside me, turned the beasts against each other, or even a tiger of a different color. I stood in the heat and the light, and I needed things that I couldn’t explain to the others.
“I can help you calm your tiger.” Victor’s voice came from behind us. He’d followed us into the light.
“I don’t think so,” Edward said.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes.”
Edward looked at me. “Anita, he almost brought your beast earlier.”
“That was an accident,” Victor said, “but I am trained to help the females of my clan keep their human form.”
Edward drew me closer to himself. But we were out of time; the tiger was about to hit the surface of me. “Let him try, Edward, or I could be tiger for real.”
I reached for Victor, and Edward let me go, reluctantly. Victor put his hands on either side of my face, the way that Crispin had done when I’d first met him in North Carolina. Victor threw his colored glasses away, so that I gazed into those pale blue eyes, naked to the light. I fell into those eyes, and the tiger slowed inside me. It didn’t stop, but it slowed.
He lowered his face toward mine.
I sensed movement to the side and caught the tall, dark presence of Olaf. Edward stopped him from touching us. “Let him,” Edward said.
Victor kissed me. He pressed his mouth over mine. With Crispin I had forced my beast into him and brought his own tiger, but now Victor breathed his power into me. Not his beast, but his power. That skin-tingling, breath-stealing power, like nothing I’d ever felt from any lycanthrope except his own mother.
The tiger inside me paused, then started trotting again, so close, so close to being out.
Victor drew back enough to say, “You must accept my power willingly. You are too strong for me to force your beast into stillness.”
The tigress was at the surface of me, like she was gazing up from the bottom of some pool, and I was that pool. Always before the beasts had slammed into me, as if I were a solid object to tear through, but now I was water, and the tigress hesitated.
“Look at me, not your beast, Anita.” He drew my attention back to his eyes, his face.
The tigress scraped a claw down the underneath of the water that was me, and only Victor’s hands kept me standing. Always before it had hurt more, but now I knew, absolutely knew, that this new watery barrier would not hold the beast. Whatever Marmee Noir had done, she wanted me to shift. She wanted me to be tiger. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that anything she wanted, I shouldn’t give her.
The tiger took another pass, and I swear I felt my skin move with it. “Save me,” I whispered.
“Let me in,” he whispered back, as he pressed his mouth on mine one more time.
I wasn’t sure how to do it, so I dropped the shields to my beasts. The tigress let out a roar of triumph, in the same instant that Victor’s power smashed into her. She screamed at its touch, but the power drove her back. Victor’s power was a warm, living wind that chased her back, gently but inexorably. Then, suddenly, she was gone, and I was alone in my skin. Alone in my skin, but still wrapped in Victor’s arms.
He drew away from the kiss, but kept his arms on me, as if he wasn’t sure I could stand. Me either.
“You’re bleeding,” Bernardo said, softly.
I looked down and couldn’t see anything under the vest, but Victor had blood on the lower part of his body. “I don’t think it’s mine,” he said.
Edward moved up to block the view. “We need to get out of here.”
“You make friends too damn fast for comfort.” Hooper was there, with some of his team.
Victor whispered, “Can you stand?”
I thought about it, then nodded.
Victor stepped away from me, standing so that the cops might not see the blood on his front. I said, “Sorry you don’t like how I make friends, Sergeant.” I meant that, actually. I liked Hooper and would have liked to keep his good opinion, but . . . The most important thing was to get the hell away from all the other cops and see how badly I was hurt.
“I’ll be your friend.” This from Georgie.
“Sorry, my dance card is a little full.”
“No fucking joke.” He gave me that look that you never want to see from a man who is supposed to be a coworker and has never been your boyfriend. His too-young face didn’t carry the look well.
But Hooper was giving me a look I wanted even less. He’d narrowed his eyes and was trying to see around the blocking bodies of the other men. He started toward us. Edward started us toward the car. Victor came with us. We did our best to keep the blood out of sight. It didn’t show on my black-on-black, but Victor’s pale shirt showed the blood scarlet.
Hoop
er sent the other men inside, then kept walking toward us. Sanchez caught up with him, kept him talking. It looked like they were arguing, but it gave us enough time to get me in the back of the car. Victor rode shotgun so he could direct Bernardo to the doctor. Edward rode in back with me, and Olaf, too. We tried to get Olaf to drive, but he simply would not agree to driving. Hooper had broken away from Sanchez and was moving our way again. We were out of time to argue.
“Drive,” Edward said.
Bernardo drove.
48
“TAKE OFF THE vest, Anita. We may need to put pressure on the wound.”
If it had just been Edward and me in the backseat, I’d have been okay with that, but Olaf sat beside me like some looming shadow. I gave one glance up at his face, and there was nothing in his face that made me want to undress in front of him.
“Stop being a girl,” Edward said, “just do it.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“No, and I know why you don’t want to do it, but bleeding to death because you don’t want Olaf to see you bloody and half naked is a stupid reason to die.”
Put that way . . . “Fine,” I said, and let that one word hold as much anger as it could. I helped him get me out of the holsters and weapons. I gave them to Edward, as I’d given them to him at Bibiana’s place, because who else would I trust with my weapons? But that left Edward’s hands full, and Olaf to help me unfasten the side of the vest. I expected him to dwell on each movement, the way he had in the morgue, but he was strangely businesslike. He simply unfastened the Velcro on the sides and lifted it off me. The blue of my T-shirt had streaks of purple on the stomach area, where blood had soaked through. Not good.
Olaf just suddenly had a knife in his hand. I said, “No! You don’t have to cut the shirt off me!” I started pulling the shirt out of my jeans. I admit that I was tensed, ready for it to catch and hurt on the wounds. Cutting it off would actually have been more practical, and the shirt was ruined anyway, but the sight of the big man looming over me with the huge serrated blade . . . No way was I giving him an excuse to bring the blade closer to my skin.
Skin Trade Page 32
