Skin Trade

by Hamilton, Laurell K.

  51

  EDWARD AND I got to flash badges and go down the corridor that held the interrogation rooms, but we heard the argument from around the corner. I recognized Bernardo’s voice and that of another man. I caught words: “How do you know . . . You can’t let her go . . . Why not?”

  We came around the corner to find Detective Ed Morgan arguing with Bernardo. I hadn’t realized that Morgan was a little under six feet until I saw him next to the very six feet of Bernardo. Always harder to get up in someone’s face if you have to look up at them, but Morgan was trying. Olaf was leaning against the wall, slouching so he didn’t tower over everyone, looking bored.

  Morgan turned on us like a storm looking for somewhere to fall. He pointed a finger at us. “You know something that you’re not telling us about Paula Chu.”

  “We just got here,” I said. “We don’t even know what the fight’s about.”

  Olaf pushed himself upright and said, “They want to let the weretigers go, and Bernardo is trying to hold Paula Chu.”

  Bernardo looked at us, his eyes black with anger. The bones of his face tight with it.

  “But he won’t tell me why he wants to hold Chu,” Morgan said, striding down the hall toward us. Edward and I kept walking, so we sort of met in the middle. He waved a finger in Edward’s face, then mine. “And one of you told him to keep her here, but not why. Why? What are you holding back?”

  The anger vibrated off him in waves. I had the thought, I could feed on that anger. I’d feel better, and the fight would be over. No, bad, Anita, bad idea. I tried to put my hands in my pockets, but had too many weapons in the way.

  “Maybe it’s the fact that she was the live-in girlfriend of the weretiger that went apeshit this afternoon,” Bernardo said, coming up behind us all. Olaf trailed behind him.

  “That’s not enough to hold her,” Morgan said.

  “I know you can hold her for longer than this, Morgan,” Edward said.

  I had an idea. “What if we make a cast of the claws on all these tigers, match them to the wounds. We can let them go after that, if you want.”

  “We are not encouraging these people to shapeshift inside the police station, Blake. No way.”

  “They don’t need to shift all the way, just the claws,” I said.

  He frowned at me. “What?”

  “I told the ME that the claw marks were those made by the very powerful shapeshifters that can just put claws out and then back down, sort of like switchblades.”

  “We had the lecture on lycanthropes,” Morgan said. “The powerful have two shapes: full animal and man-animal. And once they shift, they can be overcome by a desire for fresh meat and killing. They can’t shift back for at least six to eight hours, and once they shift back, they are comatose for hours after that. I’m not setting weretigers loose in our station, when we can’t guarantee that they’d even be thinking enough like people to let us take a cast of their claws.”

  “Trust me, if they can do the instant claws, then they’re thinking just fine, and only the very new lycanthropes have the overpowering need to feed right after they shift.”

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you instead of our own experts,” Morgan said, disdain thick in his voice.

  “She’s who I call when I’m stumped,” Edward said.

  I looked at him and tried to see behind that pleasant Ted face. “Thanks, Ted.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t care that you trust her. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust any of you.”

  I said, trying for patience, “Your expert either hunts them or studies them academically, right?”

  Morgan frowned, thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I live with two of them. Trust me when I say that I know shapeshifters better than your expert.”

  “So because you’re fucking some shapeshifters, I should just trust you?”

  I smiled, but it wasn’t my happy smile, it was the one I did when I was trying not to get mad. “Yeah, actually, I know shapeshifters in ways that your expert couldn’t imagine.”

  “I don’t need to hear about your kinks, Blake.”

  I took that last step, invading his personal space. I stepped until either he had to back up or we’d touch. He stood his ground, so that we were a hair’s breadth apart. From any distance at all, you’d think we were touching.

  Morgan blinked down at me. That blink was a nervous gesture; his tell, like in poker. He didn’t like me this close, or . . .

  I spoke carefully, letting the anger seep into my voice. “My kinks are none of your business, Morgan. Catching this bastard is. Do you want to help me catch him, or her, or do you want to piss and moan and criticize my sex life?”

  “What am I supposed to think when you tell me you’re living with two of them?”

  “You’re supposed to think that I am a valuable resource of information about a little-known minority in this country, and that my insight might be invaluable to this investigation.” I spoke lower and lower, and watched him lean in to hear.

  His face was almost touching mine when I finished. He had an odd expression on his face as he said, softly, “Invaluable.”

  I didn’t kiss him, didn’t touch him at all, but in that moment he surrendered to me, and I fed on his anger. One breath, it was inside him; the next, it was on my skin like a warm rush of air. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, and it was good, and I hadn’t meant it.

  Edward touched my shoulder and eased me back from the detective. Morgan stayed standing, staring at where I’d been, as if I hadn’t moved.

  Bernardo whispered, “Your eyes.”

  We heard someone behind us. Edward got his sunglasses out of his pocket and handed them to me. I didn’t ask why; the look on all their faces was enough. My eyes had gone all vampiry. I’d had it happen a time or two, but I’d always been able to feel it happen. I slipped the glasses on and realized that I hadn’t done it on purpose, but Morgan was still standing there, staring at nothing. Not knowing what I’d done to him, or how, I didn’t know how to bring him out of it. Feeding on someone’s anger had never done this before. Shit.

  Bernardo started walking down the hall. “Sheriff Shaw, how you doing tonight?”

  Of course, it would be Shaw. Double shit.

  “Bring him out of this, Anita,” Edward whispered.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Do something,” Olaf said under his breath as he moved not down the hall but to block Shaw’s view of Morgan and me. With his broad back in the way, I moved closer to the detective.

  I said, “Morgan, Morgan, you in there?”

  “Hurry,” Edward said.

  I snapped my fingers in front of his face. Nothing. In desperation I shook his shoulder, enough to bob his head, and said, harshly, “Morgan!”

  He blinked and raised his head. He looked around as if he didn’t expect to be standing in the hallway. I waited for him to accuse me of using magic on him, a serious breach of so many laws, but he just looked around us. “I’ll get to work on those subpoenas.”

  “Subpoenas?” I said.

  “Yeah, so we can get claw mark casts from the weretigers. Either that’ll clear them, or we’ll know we have our bad guy, or girl.” He smiled at me, a real smile. Then he moved past us toward Shaw, who was finally getting past Bernardo.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Shaw asked.

  Morgan, still smiling, explained about the subpoenas and all of it.

  “It’s not possible for them to shift just claws,” Shaw said.

  Morgan corrected him and parroted back almost word for word what I’d told him.

  Shaw looked past Morgan to me as he said, “And who told you all this?”

  “Marshal Blake.”

  “She did, did she?”

  Morgan nodded and went off to do what I’d wanted him to do, and what minutes before he would never have done at all. Mother of God, what had I done? And was it a good thing or a bad thing?


  52

  SHAW CAME DOWN the hallway, so angry it bordered on rage, and that little voice in my head said, Food. I could siphon off his anger and feed. Anger wasn’t as complete a feed as lust and romance for the ardeur. It was having a snack but not a meal. It had been nearly twelve hours since I’d last fed the ardeur. It took energy to heal wounds, and though I’d slept in the shadow of Victor’s energy, I hadn’t fed off him. Shit, shit, shit, I needed to be away from the other cops, and soon.

  “You did something to Morgan. I don’t know what, or how, but you did something.”

  I moved a little behind Edward so there’d be no chance of Shaw getting too close to me. I didn’t trust myself around all that rage.

  “You can’t hide behind Forrester forever, Blake.”

  “Think of it as more for your protection than mine,” I said, smiling sweetly. Which was the wrong thing to say, and the wrong thing to do. Why had I done either? What was wrong with me?

  His face began to mottle with his anger. His big hands folded into fists. “Are you threatening me?”

  “No,” I said, and tried to make that one word inoffensive.

  His cell phone went off, and he stepped away, sort of sideways to us, as if he didn’t want to give us his back, to bark into the phone, “Shaw, what?” He was quiet for a few minutes listening, then nodded and said, “We’ll be there.”

  He walked back to us, the anger level lower, and his face edged with lines that hadn’t been there a moment before. I was almost a hundred percent sure what the news would be.

  “We have another dead stripper. It looks like it’s this Vittorio again.”

  I didn’t chastise him for not giving us the files on the earlier stripper deaths. The tiredness in his face showed just how much this case was taking out of him. “We’ll follow you,” Edward said.

  “Fine.” He turned and went back the way we’d come. We trailed behind him.

  Edward dropped back and whispered, “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He lowered his voice even more, “You fed on him somehow.”

  “His anger,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen you do that.”

  “It’s new.”

  “What else is new?” he asked, and the look in his eyes wasn’t one I liked seeing from Edward. He was my friend, my good friend, but there was still part of him that wondered which of us was better. I knew who was better—him—but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that. There was a part of him that was no longer certain he’d win, and a bigger part of him wanted the question answered. Now he looked at me, not like a friend but like he was wondering how much more powerful I’d grown, and what that might mean if we ever hunted each other.

  “Don’t go there, . . . Ted,” I said.

  He gave me eyes as cold as a winter sky. “You need to tell me about the new stuff.”

  “No,” I said, “not with that look on your face, I don’t.”

  He smiled then, and it was a smile to match the eyes. It wasn’t that different from the way a shapeshifter looked at you when they were wondering what you’d taste like, except Edward’s smile wasn’t as warm.

  We were out in the neon-lit dark, but it was still too dark for the glasses . . . had my eyes turned back? I waited until we’d followed Olaf and Bernardo to the SUV. When we were all in our seats, I lowered the glasses enough so I could flash them at Edward. “How do I look?”

  “Normal,” he said, and his voice was crawling back out of that Edward cold, to something that wouldn’t frighten small children if they heard it.

  I handed the glasses back to him.

  He shook his head. “Keep them, just in case.”

  “What happened to mine?”

  “Smashed.” He started the engine and followed the line of police cars that were trailing out, lights and sirens filling the night, as if we were trying to wake everyone up.

  “How did my glasses get smashed, and what happened to the windbreaker you loaned me?”

  “Bibiana and her tigers wanted to put another weretiger in the bed with you and Victor. I didn’t agree.”

  Bernardo leaned forward over the backseat, holding on to the seat as Edward took a corner a little fast. “What happened in the hallway, Anita?”

  “She did something to the detective,” Olaf said.

  I glanced back at the big man, almost lost in the shadows of the car. “How do you know what I did?”

  “I don’t know what you did to him, but I know you did something. I saw your eyes change.”

  “You didn’t say anything,” Bernardo said.

  “I didn’t think we wanted the other policeman to know.”

  “Sorry that I blurted that out,” Bernardo said, giving Olaf a look, then back to me. “But what did you do to Morgan?”

  I glanced at Edward.

  “Tell them, if you want to.”

  “You saw what I did.”

  “You made him agree with you,” Olaf said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you do it?” Bernardo asked.

  “If I said I don’t know, would you believe me?”

  Bernardo said no, and Olaf said yes.

  Bernardo frowned at him again. “Why do you believe that?”

  “The look on her face when she realized what she had done. It frightened her.”

  Bernardo seemed to think about it, then frowned again. “She didn’t look scared; nervous, maybe.”

  “It was fear.”

  “And you’re sure of that?” Bernardo asked.

  “Yes,” Olaf said.

  “Because you know Anita so well.”

  “No, because I know the look of fear on someone’s face, Bernardo, man or woman. I know fear when I see it.”

  “Fine.” Bernardo turned back to me. “Are you a vampire?”

  “No.” Then I thought about it. “Not in the traditional sense.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t feed on blood. I’m not dead. Holy objects and sunshine don’t bother me. I go to church most Sundays and nothing bursts into flame.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice on that last part.

  “But you can cloud men’s minds and make them do what you want, like a vamp.”

  “This was the first time for that.”

  The cars had stopped ahead, smearing the bubble lights into the mix of neon from the buildings. We were just off the main Strip, so that the brighter lights of it peeked over the buildings around us like some artifical dawn pressing against the night.

  “We’re here,” Edward said.

  “Which is your way of saying, Stop asking questions,” Bernardo said.

  “It is,” Edward said.

  “I think we have a right to ask questions when we’re helping her cover up whatever she’s doing.”

  I couldn’t really argue that.

  “You’ve both volunteered to feed her with sex,” Edward said. “You might want to understand what you’re volunteering for before you open your mouth.” With that, Edward opened his door and got out. I didn’t wait for an invitation. I got out, too, and left our backseat drivers to scramble out and follow us. Okay, Bernardo scrambled. Olaf just seemed to pour himself out of the car and be walking behind us. Funny that Bernardo was all spooked, but Olaf seemed fine with it. Of course, if he wanted me to overlook the whole serial killer thing, he’d have to be a little more understanding with me. Living vampire, serial killer; po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

  53

  THE BODY LAY in a broken heap in an alley behind the club she worked at, as if when they dumped the body they’d brought her home. The last body dump in St. Louis had been just outside the club where the dancer worked, too. But that one had been clean compared to this, just vampire bites. Death by exsanguination. This woman hadn’t had time to bleed to death.

  I realized that this one, like most of the body dumps in St. Louis, was in a place where shadows would hide some of the damage. Almost as if even the kille
r couldn’t face what he’d done in bright light.

  The woman’s neck was at an angle so sharp that I could see spine poking against the skin of the neck, not quite through the skin, but close. The neck was ugly and wrong, but that was nothing compared to what he, or they, had done to the rest of the . . . body.

  There were burns on half her face, and going down one side of the body. The skin was red and angry and blackened and peeling, and the other half of her body was perfect. Pale and young and beautiful, paired with the blackened ruin of the other half of her.

  Bernardo took a sharp breath in and walked a little way down the alley. I forced myself to stay squatted by the body, and tried not to smell anything. The alley didn’t smell that good to begin with, but usually burned flesh overpowers everything else. This didn’t. The burns weren’t that fresh, or they would’ve smelled more.

  I swallowed hard and stood up, letting myself look at the people around me instead of the body. I had to keep thinking of it, really hard, as the body, because to humanize it at all would be too much. It wouldn’t help me solve this crime to think about what this woman had gone through. Honest, it wouldn’t.

  Shaw stood there, staring down at the body, with a look on his face that I could only describe as lost. Morgan had rejoined us, telling us that he had the subpoenas in the works. He now seemed to think it was his idea, and was back to not being all that friendly with me. I was actually relieved. Whatever I’d done to him seemed to be short acting. Detective Thurgood had joined us in her ill-fitting skirt suit, sensible high heels, and bad attitude. But no one’s attitude was particularly rosy, so it was okay.

  I asked them, “Have the other bodies looked like this?”

  “Not like this,” Shaw said.

  “No,” Morgan said.

  Thurgood just shook her head, lips in a line so thin that her mouth was almost invisble in her face. From the lips and the lack of talking, I was betting she was fighting off nausea.