Skin Trade

by Hamilton, Laurell K.

  I must have made some small involuntary pain sound, because Edward put my weapons on the floor and had his own knife in his hand. “We need to see, Anita.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d picked up the slack of the shirt and was already cutting. I could have stopped him, but he was right, and I wasn’t afraid of Edward. He cut up the middle of the shirt, his blade sharp enough that it made a straight, almost surgical line up the center. He cut it until the collar of the T-shirt stopped the blade. I might have protested that I really was half naked now, but I could see my stomach, and the fact that everyone could see my bra just didn’t seem important.

  “Crap,” I said.

  There were bloody claw marks on my stomach. I’d bled before when I almost changed, but I’d never had wounds from it before. Blood had seeped out from under my nails, but never this.

  Olaf’s fingers hovered over one ragged-edged wound. I started to tell him, Don’t touch me, but he said, “The edges of the wounds are wrong.”

  “They go out, not in,” Edward said.

  I stared down at the wounds, but the angle wasn’t as good for me, or maybe it’s just harder to look at your own body when it’s cut open and analyze the wounds. I tried to be positive. “Well, at least it’s not as bad as the last stomach wound.”

  “True,” Edward said.

  “Yes, your intestines are not bulging out this time,” Olaf said. He said it so calmly, as if it hadn’t mattered then and didn’t matter now. I guess, what can you expect from a sociopath?

  He put those big fingers just over the wounds. There was a faint shudder in his hand, and he had to raise it higher to flex the hand, and then he put it back over the wounds and traced his hand over the wounds. “It looks as if something has tried to get out, not slashed from a distance.” He spread his hand over the marks. I started to protest, but realized his hand could almost cover it all; a dainty claw as claws went. Dainty as the wounds we’d found on the victims.

  “They are the same size,” he said. He laid his hand on the wounds. The pain was sharp and immediate, and I know I made some small sound, because two things happened at once. Edward said, “Olaf,” with that warning in the word; and Olaf let his breath out in a sigh that was totally inappropriate for blood and wounds. Okay, inappropriate if you weren’t a serial killer.

  “Stop touching me,” I said, and made every word as hard and firm as I’d ever made them. I don’t know why, but for the first time this kind of behavior from him didn’t scare me. It just pissed me off. Let’s hear it for anger.

  He moved his hand and gazed down at me with those cave-dark eyes. Whatever he saw in my face didn’t please him, because he said, “You aren’t afraid.”

  “Of you, not right now. I just had something try to tear its way out of me. Sorry, but on the horrible scale, that’s got my attention. Now stop using my pain as your foreplay and fucking help me.”

  He took his leather jacket off, folded it, and put it against my stomach. “It will hurt, but if I apply pressure to the wounds you will not lose as much blood.”

  “Do it,” I said.

  He pressed, and it hurt, but sometimes things need to hurt some now, so they don’t hurt a lot more later. I must have made a small sound because Edward asked, “Is he hurting you?”

  “No more than he needs to,” I said, and was proud that my voice was almost steady. Let’s hear it for the tough-as-nails vampire hunter. Not fazed by overgrown serial killers or the beasts inside her. Shit.

  “Victor,” I said.

  He turned in his seat to look at me. His glasses had apparently been left on the sidewalk because I was gazing into the bare blue eyes of his tiger. No, of him. The weretigers, like Victor, were born, not made. “Yes, little queen.”

  “First, stop calling me that. Second, are the claw marks on me what my tiger would be sizewise, if it could get out?”

  He thought about that for a second or two. Bernardo had to ask, “I made the last turn; what now?”

  He gave him more directions, then turned back to me. “You are a very different kind of . . . case. But, I believe, yes. It is the size you would be.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  Edward said, “Martin Bendez had bigger hands than Anita, even human.”

  “Our killer is a woman,” I said.

  “No, some men have hands as small as yours,” Olaf said.

  “Any of your male weretigers have hands this small?” I asked, and held up one hand for Victor to judge. He reached through the seats and held his own larger hand up next to mine.

  “Only Paula Chu.”

  “Wait,” Bernardo said, “if Bendez wasn’t the weretiger we were looking for, then why did he attack the police?”

  “Good question,” Edward said.

  Victor gave us an answer. “He had an ex-wife who was charging him with abuse. He had not been one of our successes, and if the charges were served, then he was either going to jail for life, or . . .”

  Bernardo finished for him. “Or have a warrant of execution on his ass.”

  “Yes. In other states, they might offer him a permanent place in one of the government areas for shapeshifters, but Nevada, like most of the western states, still has varmint laws on the books. Three strikes for us in this part of the country usually means death.”

  “It might have been useful to know that going in,” Edward said, and not like he was happy with ol’ Victor.

  Bernardo took a corner a little sharp, making Olaf have to struggle for balance. He pressed harder on me, and I fought not to make pain noises. He put one long leg out to wedge himself in place. “That pain was accidental,” he said.

  I’d been doing a good job of ignoring him, which, considering he was like six foot six and leaning over me, with his hands and jacket in my blood, was a testament either to shock or to my powers of concentration. I was betting on shock. But now I looked up at him, saw him. I saw the flicker of him deep down in those eyes of his. I saw him looking at me. I saw him fighting not to show everything he was feeling in his face, and failing.

  He moved his face so that the only person who could see directly into his was me. He gazed down at me, with his big hands in the leather, pressing on the wounds in my body, and he let his lips part, his eyes go soft. His own pulse beat thick and heavy against the side of his neck.

  I tried to think of what to say, or do, that wouldn’t make things worse, and finally tried to concentrate on the job. “They would have run him for priors, just routine.” I looked at Victor as I said it, because I couldn’t bear to look at Olaf anymore. I wanted him to stop touching me, but he’d enjoy fear, or even revulsion. I didn’t know a reaction that would lessen his pleasure except ignoring him.

  “But Marshal Forrester is right, I should have mentioned it.”

  “The claw marks prove that it’s someone else, most likely Paula Chu,” I said.

  “But we can’t explain to the police how we know that without explaining your wounds,” Edward said. “They might yank your badge. We get a lot more leeway in the preternatural branch, but if they think you might turn furry for real on the job, they’ll want you out.”

  “I know.”

  “So,” Bernardo said, “we know something they need to know, but we aren’t sharing.”

  “Would they understand and believe us even if we shared?” I asked.

  Everyone was silent. Finally, Edward said, “Sanchez might, but I don’t know about the rest. If Anita is going to lose her badge, I’d rather it be for something that the cops would take seriously, not something that they’d blow off.”

  “They have their bad guy,” Bernardo said. “They aren’t going to want to believe they killed the wrong guy.”

  “But if it is Paula, then we could get the daytime retreat from her,” I said.

  Olaf surprised most of us in the car by saying, “Ted, can you take over?”

  Edward didn’t argue, just moved up on his knees to put pressure to the wounds. But he gave me wide eyes, as if t
o say, What the hell? I agreed. Olaf had voluntarily given up a chance to touch me bleeding and hurt. What was wrong?

  Olaf was staring at his hands. They were bloody. “Do you remember, Anita, how you could not do your job in the morgue with me there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He licked his lips, closed his eyes, and let a shudder go through him from that bald head to the tips of his boots. He opened his eyes and let out a breath that shook. “I cannot do my job, touching you like that. I cannot think of anything but you, and the blood, and the wounds.” He closed his eyes again, and I think he was counting, or doing whatever he did to regain control.

  We were all staring at him except Bernardo, who had to drive. “Is this it?” he asked Victor.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Olaf opened his eyes. “Some of us need to go back and watch over the woman, Paula Chu.”

  “Agreed,” Edward and I said, together.

  “Bernardo and I can go back,” he said.

  “Thanks for volunteering me, big guy.”

  “You are welcome,” Olaf said, as if he didn’t get the sarcasm at all.

  We were in a part of town that was more downscale than the Strip, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell much more from where I was half reclined on the seat.

  Bernardo and Victor got out; Bernardo opened the door behind Edward. I started to try to scoot out, but the pain grabbed me like a sharp hand and made me stop in midmotion. “Just let me do it, Anita,” Edward said. He started to pull me out, as gently as he could.

  Victor peered in and said, “We’re being watched. Maybe even photographed.”

  “Then why bring us here?” Edward asked.

  “It was closer, and you can legitimately say you’re here to question Paula Chu’s coworkers, but we need Anita to walk in on her own power, if possible.”

  “Can you walk?” Edward asked.

  “How far?”

  “Ten yards.” Just like that, he knew exactly the distance to the door. I’d have never been able to be that precise.

  “Let me lean on someone’s arm and be all girly, and I’ll do it.”

  I got upright, and the leather jacket fell to the floor. Olaf crawled over the seat and picked it up, as Edward let me take his arm and begin to try to get out of the truck on my own power.

  Olaf reached out and helped arrange my shirt over the wounds. Though red and blue made a lot of purple on my shirt. We tucked the ends into my pants to hide the slice.

  I got standing, though my grip on Edward’s arm was as serious a hold on any man’s arm that I’d ever had. It hurt just to stand, and I could feel the blood begin to trickle down my stomach. Not good, and if it hurt to stand, it was going to hurt more to walk. Perfect.

  Edward had tucked some of my weapons in and around his body, but a lot of them and my vest were on the floor. “Weapons,” I said, in a voice that was a little strained.

  “Leave them,” Victor said.

  “No,” I said.

  Olaf simply started gathering them up and tucking what he could into his waistband. Edward had already added my backpack to his load. He picked up the leather jacket. “To hide my hands,” he said.

  I realized that his hands were spattered with my blood. I’d seen it moments before, but something about the sight of it, and standing at the same time, made the desert heat swim around me.

  “Inside,” I whispered, “need inside soon.”

  Edward didn’t ask any questions, just helped me turn for the walk. Things in my stomach pulled wrong when I turned. My inside stomach rolled threateningly. I prayed that I would not throw up while my outside stomach was cut up. That would be very painful. I took shallow breaths through my mouth of the hot, still air, and concentrated on each step. Concentrated on making the movement as natural as possible for the cameras, and not moving so fast that I ripped the wounds open more. It was one of the most careful walks I could remember. I was concentrating so hard that I wasn’t really aware of the building until Victor was holding the door for us. Then I looked up, and saw the sign that said Trixie’s, which had a neon-formed seminude woman sitting in a huge martini glass. The sign was enough, but they’d felt compelled to put more neon in the window by the door that simply said, Girls, girls, girls—all nude, all the time.

  I gave Victor a look as we walked slowly past him. He whispered, “The doctor is waiting inside, and this is where Paula Chu works. You can find a clue that lets you tell them to keep holding her without giving away your secret.”

  I couldn’t argue with his logic, and the air inside the door was cool. At this point if I could lie down and have air-conditioning, I didn’t care where we did it. I swallowed past the nausea one more time and let Edward help me into the cool twilight of Trixie’s; all nude, all the time. At least hell was cool.

  49

  THE MUSIC WAS loud, though not the ear-jarring loud of some clubs. The music sounded tired, or maybe that was just me. My eyes adjusted and saw small tables scattered around a surprisingly large room. There was a main stage and smaller table/stages with seats around them. It was before seven o’clock, and men were already sitting in the darkened room. Women crawled around on the table/stages, as nude as the sign promised. I averted my eyes, because some views should be seen by only your gynecologist or a lover.

  The main stage was empty, but huge. It had a small runway and a circular area with seats around it. I’d never seen a stage like it in any strip club, outside an old movie.

  Victor led us through the tables, and we followed, because having me carried in front of the customers would not help our cover story.

  Edward didn’t try to comfort me; he just kept his arm flexed and solid under my double-handed grip and walked slowly. Olaf and Bernardo were still behind us. Victor got to a small door to one side of the main stage long before I managed to get there. The pain had gone past just pain and was dizziness. My vision was beginning to spot, and that was not good. How much blood had I lost, and how much was I losing?

  The world narrowed down to concentrating on moving my feet. The pain in my stomach was growing distant, as my vision started to blur and run in light and dark streamers around me. I had a death grip on Edward’s arm and trusted him to keep me from running into anything.

  Edward’s voice. “Anita, we’re through. Anita, you can stop walking.” He had to grab my shoulder, make me look at him. I just stared at him, seeing his face but not understanding why the lights were brighter.

  A hand touched my forehead. “Her skin is cool to the touch,” Olaf said.

  Edward picked me up, and that hurt, too, enough that I cried out, and the world swam in bright streamers. I concentrated on not throwing up, and that helped me through the pain. Then we were in a room that was dim again, but not as dark as the club. They laid me on a table underneath a light. There was cloth underneath me, and the crinkle of plastic underneath that.

  Someone was fumbling at my left arm. I saw a man I didn’t know, and said, “Edward.”

  “I’m here,” and he came to stand by my head.

  Victor’s voice. “This is our doctor. He really is a doctor, and he’s patched a lot of my people up. He’s very good at sewing us up so we don’t scar.”

  “This will sting a little,” the doctor said. He put an IV in me and started fluids. I was in shock. I had only an impression of dark hair and dark skin, and that he was more ethnic than either Bernardo or me. Beyond that, he was sort of blurry.

  “How much blood did she lose?” he asked.

  “It didn’t look like that much in the car,” Edward said.

  There was movement, and I started to try to look at it, but Edward caught my face between his hands. “Look at me, Anita.” It was the way a parent would try to keep you from seeing the big bad doctor.

  “Oh,” I said, “that’s not good.”

  He smiled. “What, I’m not interesting enough? I can get Bernardo for you to gaze up at. He’s prettier.”

  “You’re teasing me, trying to distr
act me. Shit, what’s about to happen?”

  “He doesn’t want to give you painkillers, between the blood loss and the shock. If we were in a hospital with more equipment, he’d chance it, but without it, he doesn’t want to take that risk.”

  I swallowed hard, and this time it wasn’t nausea, but fear. “There are four claw marks,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to slow my pulse, and fought off the urge to get off the table and run for it. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “I know,” he said, but he kept his hands on my face, not exactly holding me but keeping me looking at him.

  Olaf said, from somewhere off to the right, “Anita has healed worse than this. They did not have to sew her wounds in St. Louis.”

  “That’s because she was healing too fast to need it,” Edward said.

  “Why can’t she do that now?” he asked.

  I’d fed off the swan king, and through him every swanmane in all of America. It had been an amazing rush of power. Enough to save my life, and Richard’s, and Jean-Claude’s. We’d all been terribly hurt. So much energy that even later when I’d been cut up much worse than this, I healed it scar free in record time, almost like a real lycanthrope. But I didn’t want to explain that to strangers, so out loud I said, “Don’t have the energy.”

  “She’d need a really big feed,” Edward said.

  “Ah,” Olaf said, “the swans.”

  “Do you mean the ardeur?” Victor asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How big a feed would you need?” he asked.

  “She fed before she was hurt. I don’t think sex in this condition would be that fun.”

  I seconded that.

  Hands raised my shirt back, away from the wound.

  I tried to see, and said, “What’s happening? What is he doing?”

  The doctor’s voice. “I’m just cleaning the wound. Okay?”

  “No, but yes.”