Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #17)

Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #17) Page 22

Chapter 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 spirit 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.

Olaf said, "But all the years I have known you, Edward, you have sought to test yourself against the biggest and baddest monsters. You seek to be tested. This would have been the ultimate test."

"Probably," he said, in a low, careful voice.

"I never thought I'd live to see it," Bernardo said. "The great Edward's nerve finally fails."

Olaf and I both glared at him, but it was the big guy who said, "His nerve did not fail him."

"Then what?" Bernardo said.

"He didn't want to chance dying on Donna and the kids," I said.

"What?" Bernardo said.

"They make you fearful," Olaf said, quietly.

"I said his nerve had failed, and you yelled at me," Bernardo protested.

Olaf gave him the full weight of that flat, dark gaze. Bernardo wiggled a little in his seat, as if he fought not to back off from the inches-away gaze, but he held his ground. Point for him.

"Edward's nerve will never fail him. But you can still be afraid of something."

Bernardo looked to me. "Did that make sense to you?"

I thought about it, let it roll around in my head. "Yeah, actually it did."

"Explain it to me, then."

"If Marmee Noir comes here and attacks us, then Edward will fight. He won't run away. He won't give up. He'll fight, even if it means dying. But he's chosen not to hunt down the biggest and baddest anymore because they're more likely to kill him, and he doesn't want to leave his family behind. He's stopped courting death, but if it comes looking for him, he'll fight."

"If you fear nothing," Olaf said, "then you are not brave; you are merely too foolish to be afraid."

Bernardo and I looked at the big man. Even Edward took enough time to glance back at him. "What scares you, big guy?" Bernardo asked.

Olaf shook his head. "Fears are not meant to be shared; they are meant to be conquered."

Part of me wanted to know what could scare one of the scariest men I'd ever met. Part of me didn't want to know at all. I was afraid it would either be another nightmare for me, too, or make me feel sorry for Olaf. I couldn't afford to feel sorry for him. Pity will make you hesitate, and one day I would need to not hesitate with him. A lot of serial killers have pitiful childhoods, hideous stories where they were the victims-most of them are even true. But none of it matters. It does not matter how horrible their childhoods were, or whether they were victims themselves. It does not matter when you are at their mercy, because one thing that all the serials have in common is that for their victims, there is no mercy.

When you forget that, they kill you.

Chapter 42

EDWARD SPILLED OUT into the line of flashing police vehicles to find that the show was almost over. The second weretiger was on her knees in the yard with guns pointed at her, and Hooper and his men were piling on top of her. I got only a glimpse of white hair, cut short, and a flash of tiger-blue eyes before they bundled her into the truck.

"You start without us?" Edward called out to Hooper, in his best good-ol'-boy Ted voice. Good that he had a nice voice because I was ready to be pissed.

Hooper answered as they closed the doors on the truck. "She was kneeling in the yard, waiting for us."

"Shit," I said.

He looked at me. "Why shit? This was easy and quick."

"They know, Hooper. The other tigers know."

I watched his face get it. "Our bad guy may run."

I nodded.

"Alert your surveillance on them," Edward said.

"What surveillance?" I asked.

Edward and Hooper got a glance between them, and then Hooper was on his radio. Edward explained, "The moment we put their name in the hat, there was surveillance on them. It's standard ops."

"Fuck, no wonder they know."

Edward shrugged. "It's a way to follow them if they run."

"It's a way to spook them and get them to run. And no one mentioned this to me because...?"

"Hooper either didn't want you to know, or figured you'd realize it was standard ops."

I took a deep breath in and let it out slow, or tried to. "Fuck standard ops, the idea was surprise."

It was Shaw who came up. "We don't have to pass everything by you, Marshal. If a dangerous suspect runs, we want to know where."

"You don't get it," I said. "These guys can hear your blood in your veins. They can smell you, though admittedly a tiger's sense of smell is a lot less than, say, a wolf's, but still, they will know the cops are out there."

"My men are good at their jobs, Blake."

"Shaw, it's not about being good. It's about being human and hunting things that aren't human. Don't you get that yet?"

"They'll do their jobs," he said, and gave me those persistently unfriendly eyes.

"Yeah, I know they will. I just hope that it doesn't get them killed."

I don't know what Shaw would have said to that, because Hooper came back. "We've got radio confirmation on three of the other houses, but no answer on one."

"Shit," Shaw said.

I kept my mouth shut; an I told you so wouldn't go over well.

Shaw glared at me, almost as if he'd heard me thinking too hard. "Radios break, Blake. It doesn't have to be bad."

Edward touched my arm lightly. I understood the gesture. I kept my voice even. "You're a cop, Shaw; you know always to assume the worst. Then if it's not true, great, but if it is, you have a plan."

"Officers are already on the way to check on the men," Hooper said.

"Take us there, Hooper," I said.

"I think my men can take it from here," Shaw said.

"This is a preternatural case," I said, "we don't need your permission to be here."

Officers came out of the mob surrounding us, as if Shaw had already tapped them for the duty. He probably had. They were almost all in uniform, except for Ed Morgan. He nodded at me, smiling. It made the little crinkles at his eyes look pleasant and smiley, too. I wondered if the eyes behind the glasses were actually smiling, or if his face just went through the motions?

"Morgan here is chief of detectives at homicide," Bernardo said, smiling. His face looked just as pleasant as Morgan's had a moment ago. The announcement of his real title made the chief detective's smile falter a little around the edges. I wondered how Bernardo had found out Morgan's actual rank. I'd ask him later, when it wouldn't make us look less smart.

"Just because I'm chief of detectives doesn't mean we can't be friends," he said, recovering himself.

Hooper came up. "We've heard back. The car's empty. Blood, but no bodies."

"Shit," Shaw said.

"Let us help you," Edward said.

"You weren't any help with Minns; in fact, you slowed the operation down."

Edward looked at Hooper. "Is that how you see it, Sergeant?"

Hooper gave him his blank face. "No, but he outranks me."

"Nice of you to remember that," Shaw said.

"Which weretiger went rogue?" I asked.

"Martin Bendez," Hooper said.

"Sergeant," Shaw said, "we don't need to share with the marshals anymore."

"Is it your team going after him?" I asked Hooper.

"Henderson's team has point."

"Sergeant Hooper," Shaw said, "I gave you a direct order not to share with the marshals."

"Now it's a direct order," Hooper said, and he walked away to gather his men and his equipment and leave. He never looked back, but I knew that whatever he had told Shaw and his other "superiors," it hadn't been that we slowed them down. But he had to report that I'd gone all weird on them. They might have hired psychics for their force, but I wasn't one of their practitioners. They might be open minded, but the fact that something had happened that their own practitioner didn't understand would count against me. I had an idea.

"Can the other marshals go to the next scene?"

"I told you, you slowed us down," Shaw said. He started to walk away.

"You mean I went all metaphysical on you and creeped everyone out. Fine, punish me, keep me out of it, but no one is better at tracking these guys than Marshal Forrester. Let the other marshals go on to the next scene. I'll sit it out."

Edward was looking at me. Not saying anything, just looking at me.

"No," Shaw said.

Morgan said, "Why not, Sheriff? It'll keep the Marshals Service from getting pissy, and I've heard nothing but good about the others."

Shaw looked at him, and again there was that feeling that Morgan carried more weight than he should have, even as chief of detectives.

Shaw came to stand over me, trying to intimidate me, like I cared. "Why do you want the other marshals to go?"

"Because I don't want another crime scene in Vegas like the warehouse."

"You think we can't handle it?" Shaw asked, already getting angry.

"I think that I'd trust Ted to lead me into hell itself and get me out the other side. Marshals Spotted Horse and Jeffries are both good men in a fight. If the shit hits the fan, you couldn't do better. Let them help you, and I will stand down, Shaw."

"What could it hurt?" Morgan asked.

"Fine," Shaw said, reluctance so strong in the one word it sounded like cussing.

Edward leaned in and spoke soft and fast. "I don't like leaving you alone."

"I'm surrounded by uniforms, so I'm not alone," I said.

I knew the look I was getting even behind his sunglasses. "If I help the locals but Vittorio finds a way to get to you, that won't make either of us happy."

"Nice way to put it, but it's daylight, and if I keep my shields in place, then I'm vampire proof."

"And once darkness falls?"

"One disaster at a time." I gave him a little push. "Go find Martin Bendez. If we can get information from him, best, but just help keep our police friends alive."

"Why?" he whispered.

I realized he meant that. Sometimes I forget that when I first met Edward, he scared me almost as much as Olaf. Then he'll say something like this, and I'll remember that he's still a predator. He's my friend, and he likes me, but most other people are just things to him. Tools to use or obstacles to overcome.

"If I said it's the right thing to do, would you laugh at me?"

He smiled. "No."

"You coming, Forrester, or is chatting up your girlfriend more important?" Shaw called.

We let it go, and Edward moved away with the officers still left on the scene. Most of them had vanished when the officer down call came through.

Bernardo followed Edward, but Olaf hung back and said, "I would stay with you."

I yelled, "Ted?"

He looked back, saw the big guy, and called, "Jeffries, catch up."

Olaf hesitated, then turned and started at a march/trot to catch up. Training will tell, and he'd fallen back into that fast march without thinking about it.

I watched them get into the SUV. Edward never looked back. I trusted him to take care of himself and wished I were going along. There was also that small part of me that felt if I were there he'd be safer; everyone would be. God complex, me? Surely not. Paranoia? Maybe. All I knew was that more than almost anything else in the world, I did not want to explain to Donna and the kids why Edward would never come home to them.

Another uniform led Victor over to stand with me and Morgan and the handful of officers still with us.

I looked at Victor in his designer suit. He looked so much more elegant than the rest of us, but it didn't matter. No matter what we looked like on the outside, the police had labeled us freaks, and they were done playing with us for the day. Now it was left to the humans to chase the monster down and kill it, if they could. The fact that I was standing here with Victor said, clearly, that at least some of the Vegas PD considered me one of the monsters. You don't let monsters hunt monsters. Why? Because there's a part of every human being that believes that the monster's sympathy lies with its fellow freaks. Because that's where their sympathy would lie. In the end, it's not us they don't trust; it's themselves.