Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #17)

Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #17) Page 5

Chapter 7

HIS POWER FLOWED through the hole in my shields like something warm and alive. Shapeshifter energy was warm, but it held an edge of electricity, like your skin couldn't decide if it felt good or hurt. Shapeshifters rode that edge of pain and pleasure, but this power was just warm, almost comforting. What the hell?

His hands felt warmer in mine than they had been a moment ago, as if his temperature were rising. Again, I kept trying to equate it to a lycanthrope, because it was so not the cool touch of the grave.

I realized I was staring at our hands. I was treating him like a real vampire. You don't look one of them in the eye, but that was years ago for me. I hadn't met a vampire that could roll me with its gaze in a long time. One very alive, psychic vampire wasn't going to be able to do it, was he? So why didn't I want to meet his eyes? I realized I was nervous, almost afraid, and I couldn't have told you why. Short of someone trying to kill me, or my love life, my nerves were rock steady. So why the case of nerves?

I made myself look away from his hands on mine and meet his eyes. They were just the same almost black, the pupils lost to the color, but they weren't vampire eyes. They hadn't bled their color into shining fire across the whole of his eyes. They were human eyes, and he was only human. I could do this, damn it.

His voice seemed lower, soothing, the way you see people talk when they're trying to hypnotize someone. "Are you ready, Anita?"

I frowned at him. "Get on with it, Sergeant; the foreplay's getting tedious."

He smiled.

One of the other psychics in the room, I didn't know their voices well enough to pick who, said, "Let him be gentle, Marshal; you don't want to see what he can do."

I met Cannibal's dark, dark eyes and said the truth: "Yeah, I do want to see what he can do."

"Are you sure?" he asked, voice still low, soft, like he was trying not to wake someone.

I spoke low, too. "As much as you want to see what I can do."

"You going to fight back?"

"You hurt me, and I will."

He gave that smile that was more fierce than happy. "Okay." He leaned in, drawing down all that extra height from his much longer waist to bring our faces close, and he whispered, "Show me Baldwin, show me the operator you lost. Show me Baldwin, Anita."

It shouldn't have been that easy, but it was as if the words were magic. The memories came to the front of my head, and I couldn't stop them, as if he'd started a movie in my head.

The only light was the sweep of flashlights ahead and behind. Because I didn't have a light, it ruined my night vision but didn't really help me. Derry jumped over something, and I glanced down to find that there were bodies in the hallway. The glance down made me stumble over the third body. I only had time to register that one was our guy, and the rest weren't. There was too much blood, too much damage. I couldn't tell who one of them was. He was pinned to the wall by a sword. He looked like a shelled turtle, all that careful body armor ripped away, showing the red ruin of his upper body. The big metal shield was crushed just past the body. Was that Baldwin back there? There were legs sticking out of one of the doors. Derry went past it, trusting that the officers ahead of him hadn't left anything dangerous or alive behind them. It was a level of trust that I had trouble with, but I kept going. I stayed with Derry and Mendez, like I'd been told.

I was left gasping in the chair, staring at Cannibal, his hands tight on mine. My voice was strained as I said, "That wasn't just a memory. You put me back in that hallway, in that moment."

"I needed to feel what you felt, Anita. Show me the worst of that night."

"No," I said, but again, I was back in the room beyond the hallway. The one vampire that was still alive cringed. She pressed her bloody face against the corner behind the bed, her small hands held out as if to ward it off. At first it looked like she was wearing red gloves, then the light shone on the blood, and you knew it wasn't opera-length gloves-it was blood all the way to her elbows. Even knowing that, even having Melbourne motionless on the floor in front of her, still Mendez didn't shoot her. Jung was leaning against the wall, like he'd fall down if he didn't concentrate. His neck was torn up, but the blood wasn't gushing out. She'd missed the jugular. Let's hear it for inexperience.

I said, "Shoot her."

The vampire made mewling sounds, like a frightened child. Her voice came high and piteous, "Please, please, don't hurt me, don't hurt me. He made me. He made me."

"Shoot her, Mendez," I said into the mic.

"She's begging for her life," he said, and his voice didn't sound good.

I peeled shotgun shells out of the stock holder and fed them into the gun as I walked toward Mendez and the vampire. She was still crying, still begging, "They made us do it, they made us do it."

Jung was trying to hold pressure on his own neck wound. Melbourne's body lay on its side, one hand outstretched toward the cringing vampire. Melbourne wasn't moving, but the vampire still was. That seemed wrong to me. But I knew just how to fix it.

I had the shotgun reloaded, but I let it swing down at my side. At this range the sawed-off was quicker; no wasted ammo.

Mendez had glanced away from the vamp to me, then farther back to his sergeant. "I can't shoot someone who's begging for her life."

"It's okay, Mendez, I can."

"No," he said, and looked at me; his eyes showed too much white. "No."

"Step back, Mendez," Hudson said.

"Sir..."

"Step back and let Marshal Blake do her job."

"Sir... it's not right."

"Are you refusing a direct order, Mendez?"

"No, sir, but-"

"Then step back and let the marshal do her job."

Mendez still hesitated.

"Now, Mendez!"

He moved back, but I didn't trust him at my back. He wasn't bespelled; she hadn't tricked him with her eyes. It was much simpler than that. Police are trained to save lives, not take them. If she'd attacked him, Mendez would have fired. If she'd attacked someone else, he'd have fired. If she'd looked like a raving monster, he'd have fired. But she didn't look like a monster as she cringed in the corner, hands as small as my own held up, trying to stop what was coming. Her body pressed into the corner, like a child's last refuge before the beating begins, when you run out of places to hide and you are literally cornered, and there's nothing you can do. No word, no action, no thing that will stop it.

"Go stand by your sergeant," I said.

He stared at me, and his breathing was way too fast.

"Mendez," Hudson said, "I want you here."

Mendez obeyed that voice, as he'd been trained to, but he kept glancing back at me and the vampire in the corner.

She glanced past her arm, and because I didn't have a holy item in sight, she was able to give me her eyes. They were pale in the uncertain light, pale and frightened. "Please," she said, "please don't hurt me. He made us do such terrible things. I didn't want to, but the blood, I had to have it." She raised her delicate oval face to me. "I had to have it." The lower half of her face was a crimson mask.

I nodded and braced the shotgun in my arms, using my hip and my arm instead of my shoulder for the brace point. "I know," I said.

"Don't," she said, and held out her hands.

I fired into her face from less than two feet away. Her face vanished in a spray of blood and thicker things. Her body sat up very straight for long enough that I pulled the trigger into the middle of her chest. She was tiny, not much meat on her; I got daylight with just one shot.

"How could you look her in the eyes and do that?"

I turned and found Mendez by me. He'd taken off his mask and helmet, though I was betting that was against the rules until we left the building. I covered my mic with my hand, because no one should learn about someone's death by accident. "She tore Melbourne's throat out."

"She said the other vampire made her do it; is that true?"

"Maybe," I said.

"Then how could you just shoot her?"

"Because she was guilty."

"And who died and made you judge, jury, and ex-" He stopped in midsentence.

"Executioner," I finished for him. "The federal and state government."

"I thought we were the good guys," he said.

"We are."

He shook his head. "You aren't."

And through all of it, I could feel Cannibal's energy like a song that you can't get out of your head, but I could feel that this song was feeding on the pain, the terror, even the confusion.

I pushed at the power, shoved it away, but it was like trying to grab a spiderweb when you run through it. You feel it on your skin, but the more you pull off, the more you find, until you realize that the spider is still on you somewhere making silk faster than you can get it off you. You have to fight the urge to panic, to simply start screaming, because you know that it's on you, crawling, ready to bite. But the memory receded like turning down a radio, still there, but I could think again. I could feel Cannibal's hands in mine, and I could open my eyes, look at him, see the now. Through gritted teeth, I said, "Stop this."

"Not yet." His power pushed at me again; it was like drowning, when you think you've made it to the surface, only to have another wave hit you full in the face. But the trick to not drowning is not to panic. I would not give him my fear. The memory couldn't hurt me; I'd already lived through it.

I tried to stop the memory, but I couldn't. I pulled on my hands, still in his, and got a flicker of image, like flipping channels on a televison. The briefest image of him, his memory.

I pulled on my hands and got more, a woman under his hands, him holding her down. She was laughing, fighting not for real, and I knew it was his wife. Her hair was as dark as his, and curled like mine. It flung across the pillow, and her tan looked wonderful in the red silk. Sunlight spilled across the bed as he leaned down for a kiss.

I was suddenly back in that other bedroom, in the dark with the dead. I turned my hands in Cannibal's, caressed a finger across his wrist, just where the skin is thinnest and the blood flows close. We were back in the sunlit memory, and red silk on cotton sheets, and a woman who looked at him as if he were her world.

I felt her body underneath him, felt how much he wanted her, how much he loved her. The emotion was so strong, and just like that, I fed. I drew in the emotion of the moment.

But Cannibal didn't give up; he pushed back, and I was in my bedroom at home. Micah's face was above me, his green-gold eyes inches from mine, his body buried deep inside mine, my hands traced down his bare back until I found the curve of his ass, so I could feel his muscles working, pumping him in and out of me.

I shoved the power back at Cannibal, chased him out of my memory, and found us back in his sunlit bedroom. There were fewer clothes now, and I got a confused glimpse of his body inside hers, and then he threw me out. He jerked his hands out of mine, and the moment he stopped touching me, it was over, done. I was back in my own head, with my own memories, and he was back with his.

He got up too fast and knocked his chair to the floor with a loud clang. I sat where I was, hugging myself, huddling around the feeling of his power inside me, rifling through my head, though that didn't cover how it felt. It felt intimate, and it wasn't about the sex; it was about having his power force its way into me.

Cannibal went to the far side of the room, facing the wall and not looking at me.

"Sergeant Rocco," Lieutenant Grimes said.

I heard Cannibal's voice but wasn't ready to look at him yet, either. "The reports are accurate. She felt the loss of the operators. She's tired of killing."

"Shut up," I said, and got to my feet, but didn't knock my chair over. Point for me. "That was private. That last memory had nothing to do with the deaths of the two men."

He turned around, lowering his arms, as if he'd been hugging himself, too. He looked at me, but I saw the effort of that on his face. "You killed the vampire that killed Melbourne, you killed her while she begged for her life, and you hated doing it, but you killed her for him. I felt it; you took her life because she took his."

"I took her life because I am duty bound by the fucking law to take it."

"I know why you did it, Anita. I know what you were feeling when you did it."

"And I know what you were feeling in that other room, Sergeant. Do you want me to share that?"

"That was personal, not the job," he said.

I strode over to him, past the lieutenant. The men were on their feet, as if they felt that something was about to happen. I got close enough to hiss into Rocco's face, a harsh whisper, "You overstepped the bounds and you know it. You fed off my memories, off my emotion."

"You fed off mine," he said. He kept his voice as low as mine. Technically what we'd done hadn't been illegal, because the law just hadn't caught up to the fact that you could be a vampire and not be dead. By legal definition, neither of us could be a vampire.

"You started it," I said.

"You took my ability and used it against me," he said. He was talking low, but not whispering now. I understood; we needed to talk about some of what had happened.

"If a vampire uses an ability against me, sometimes, I can borrow it," I said.

"Explain, Cannibal," Grimes said.

We both looked at him, then back at each other. I always hated trying to explain psychic ability to people who didn't have it. It never translated quite right.

Cannibal started, "All I can sense, most of the time, is violent memories, fear, pain. When Anita tried to stop me, she drew a memory from me, and it wasn't about violence. How did you do that?"

Grimes asked, "If it wasn't violence, what was the memory?"

Cannibal and I exchanged another look. I shrugged. "It was personal, about my family." He looked from the lieutenant to me and asked again, "How did you do that?"

"In real life I do violence, but for psychic stuff I do other things better." There, that was cryptic enough; one thing I did not want the police to know was that I was a succubus. The only thing that would keep Cannibal from spilling the beans was that he didn't want me to tattle on him. We'd keep each other's secrets, if we were smart.

A look passed over his face, as if he were trying to decide what expression to show me. "She showed me love, tenderness, like the girl version of what I can do." Again, he'd told the truth, but not too much of it.

"You learned fast enough, Cannibal. The last memory you got from me wasn't about violence, either."

He nodded. "So you peeked at mine and I peeked at yours."

"Yes."

"Peeked at what?" Grimes asked.

"The people we love," Cannibal answered.

Grimes frowned from one to the other of us.

"The man in your memory wasn't a vampire," Cannibal said. "I thought you were living with the Master of the City."

"I am."

Then who is he, the man? I saw his eyes; they weren't human."

"He's a wereleopard," I said.

"Don't you have any human men in your life?"

"No," I said.

"Why not?" he asked.

I thought of a lot of answers, but settled for, "Did you plan on falling in love with your wife?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it, and said, "No, she was supposed to be a one-night stand." He frowned, and the look was enough; he hadn't meant to say that out loud. "If you were a man, I don't know what I would do right now."

"What, you'd hit me?"

"Maybe."

"You drag me through one of the worst kills of my recent past, and you stand there and bitch because I made you remember something wonderful. I think I'm ahead on karmic brownie points here. Don't you ever mind-fuck me like that again."

"Or what?" he asked.

"I can't shoot you, but if you ever touch me and do that again, I will figure out something very unpleasant to do to you that will be just as legal as what you just did to me."

We glared at each other. Grimes came beside us. "Okay, what went wrong, Cannibal?"

"She caught my power and turned it on me. I got it back, but I had to fight for it."

Grimes's eyes widened, then he looked at me. He looked at me the way he might look at a new weapon, or another shiny new truck to put in his garage from testosterone hell. "How good is she?"

"Good," Cannibal said, "and controlled. We could have seriously hurt each other, but we were both careful. Honestly, Lieutenant, if I'd known she was this powerful I'd have been gentler. If she had been less in control of her abilities, you might be carting both of us off to the hospital for the day."

Grimes continued to look at me, as if he'd only just seen me, but he talked to Cannibal like I wasn't there. "You saw her range scores when she qualified for the badge."

"Yes, sir."

"Is she as good psychically as she is with a gun?"

"Better," Cannibal said.

Grimes looked pleased. "Better, really."

"You know, Grimes, it's a little unnerving to have you looking right at me but talking like I'm not here."

"I'm sorry, really, that was inexcusable, but I've just never seen anyone take Cannibal on like that. He is the best practitioner of his kind we have."

"Yeah, I bet he's hell on wheels at an interrogation."

"He gathers information that helps us save lives, Marshal Blake."

"Yeah, I've felt how he gathers his information, Grimes, and I don't like it."

"I told you if you fought me, you might get hurt," Cannibal said.

"No, you said if I fought to keep my shields up so you couldn't get through, it might hurt me. I let you in, and frankly, I consider what you just did the equivalent of having an invited guest steal the silver."

"Am I missing something?" Grimes asked.

"No, sir."

"You're missing the fact that you aren't psychic and you're trying to be in charage of men who are. Nothing personal, Lieutenant, but if you don't have abilities, then you are going to miss things."

"I'm not a doctor either, Marshal, which is why each team has one, plus a med tech that goes out on every run. Since we added practitioners to our teams, we've saved more lives with no injuries to anyone involved than any unit in the country. I may not understand everything that just happened between you and Cannibal, but I do know that if you're as good as he is, then you can help us save lives."

I didn't know what to say to that. He was so sincere. He might even be right, but that didn't change the fact that Cannibal had mind-fucked me and enjoyed feeding on my pain. Of course, I'd fed on the energy of his memory of sex with his wife, and we'd both fed on the memory of me with Micah. Had I found another way to feed the ardeur, or without Cannibal's abilities would I never be able to repeat it again? Didn't know, wasn't sure I cared.

She's tired of killing, Cannibal had said. That was the worst insult of all because he was right. I had six years of blood on my hands, and I was tired. I could still see the vampire with her bloody hands, begging me not to kill her. I'd dreamed about her for days afterward, waking up to Micah and Nathaniel, having them pet me back to sleep or take turns getting up with me and drinking endless cups of coffee and waiting for dawn, or waiting until it was time to get ready to go to work so I could raise the dead or get a new warrant and maybe kill someone else.

I'd pushed it all back in that part of myself where all the other ugliness gets shoved, but whatever Cannibal had done had raked it up like having a scar start to bleed again. I thought I'd dealt with it, but I hadn't. I'd just tried to ignore it.

"We have to take you to Sheriff Shaw now, Marshal," Grimes said, "but we want to take you to the hospital, let you see our men. All our practitioners, and all our doctors, have come up empty on what's wrong with them. I trust Cannibal, and he's impressed. He's not easily impressed."

"I'd be happy to go to the hospital and look at them. If I can help, I'll do it."

He gave me the full weight of his sincere brown eyes, but there was a weight to them. It wasn't psychic power, but it was power. The power of belief, and a sort of purity of purpose. This unit of SWAT was Grimes's calling, his religion, and he was a true believer. One of those frightening ones whose faith can be contagious, so you find yourself believing in his dreams, his goals, as if they were your own. The last person I'd met who had that kind of energy to him had been a vampire. I'd thought Malcolm, the head of the Church of Eternal Life, had been dangerous because he was a master vampire, but I realized as I met Grimes's true-brown eyes that maybe it hadn't all been vampire powers in Malcolm either. Maybe it was simply faith.

Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally look in the mirror and aren't sure which side you're on anymore. There comes a point when having a badge doesn't make you the good guy, it just makes you one of the guys. I needed to be one of the good guys, or what the hell was I doing?

Chapter 8

I'D BEEN RIGHT about the beige cabinets against the one wall, and now I was kneeling in front of the open weapons lockers, going through the three bags to decide what to keep with me. I was back to just Grimes, Hooper, and Rocco. The other practitioners had been dismissed, but they hadn't gone far. Most of them had simply moved to the weight-lifting area and started working out. I dug through the bags to the clink of weights and the small noises that people make when they do the work. The large open space seemed to swallow the noise more than most gyms, so it was very subdued.

Hooper spoke over my shoulder. "Wait, what is that?"

I looked down into the open bag and said, "What are you looking at, and I'll tell you."

He squatted beside me and pointed. "That."

"Phosphorus grenade."

"Not like any one I've ever seen."

"It's based on the older models."

Now I had their attention. They all squatted or knelt by the bag. "How old is that thing?" Hooper asked.

"It's not old; it's actually newly manufactured. It comes from a specialty weapons house."

"What kind of specialty weapons house?" Grimes asked; he looked positively suspicious.

"One that understands that the older idea of phosphorus works better for the undead."

"How is it better?" Hooper asked.

"I don't want them to be able to run into water and put it out; I want the bastards to burn."

"Has it got the same radius as the real old ones?" Rocco asked, and he studied me with those too-dark eyes.

I fought to keep that gaze but wanted to look away. I didn't like him much right at that moment. "Actually, no. You don't have to try to be fifty feet away so you don't get fried with your target. It's a ten-foot danger zone, easier to set it and get the fuck away." I reached in and drew out an even smaller one. "This is only five feet."

"Phosphorus were never grenades, they were markers," Hooper said.

"Yeah, a marker that if you were fifty feet or closer, you would be vaporized, or wished you were. Let's call a spade a spade, gentlemen. This is a weapon."

Grimes said, "It was decommissioned. You shouldn't be able to get new tech with that material in it."

"The government has made an exception for the undead and shapeshifters."

"I didn't hear about that." Grimes sounded like he would have, if it were true.

"Gerald Mallory, Washington, DC, head vampire hunter, got a special weapons bill pushed through for us. We had a couple of preternatural marshals get killed when the newer grenades got doused by water."

"I did hear about that," Grimes said. "The vampires burned them alive and filmed it."

"Yep," I said. "They put it on YouTube before it got yanked. It was used to get the warrant for them and to get us some new toys."

"Did you watch the film?" Rocco asked, and again there was too much weight to his gaze. I met it, but it made me fight not to wiggle. You'd think I was uncomfortable around him now. Nay, not me.

"No," I said.

"Why not?" he asked.

I expected Grimes to tell him to stop, but no one came to my rescue. I was pretty sure they were still kicking my tires. Something about what I'd done in the other room with their head psychic had made them more serious about me.

I switched my gaze to Grimes to answer. "Been there, done that, didn't want the T-shirt."

"Explain," Grimes said.

"I've seen people burned alive before, Lieutenant; I didn't feel like seeing it again. Besides, once you've seen and smelled it in person, film really can't compare." I knew my gaze had gone a little angry, maybe even hostile. I didn't care. I wasn't interviewing here; I was here to do my job.

I went back to sorting through my bag.

"They are not going to let you walk into homicide with explosives," Grimes said.

I spoke without looking up, "Not even a small one?"

"I doubt it," he said.

"I'll leave them here then," I said, and started getting out things I thought they might allow me to carry.

I ended up with the guns lying in a line on the floor. The Mossberg 590A1 Bantam shotgun; a sawed-off that I'd had made, cut down from an Ithaca 37; Heckler amp; Koch's MP5, my favorite submachine gun; and Smith amp; Wesson's MP9c. I was still wearing the Browning BDM, which had replaced my Browning Hi-Power for concealed carry. The BDM had fewer knobbly bits to catch on clothing. Though honestly, the S amp;W was the best of the three for concealed carry, but then that was one of the niches it was built to fill.

I laid the blades out next. The machete that was my favorite for beheading, mostly chickens, but I'd used it on vampires a time or two. The two smaller blades that fitted into wrist sheaths. They had higher silver content than a normal knife. They were also balanced for my hands. They sat on the floor in their custom sheaths, fitted for my muscular but small forearms. I had one extra knife that was an in-between size that I'd started carrying since they made me wear the vest. It fitted into the Velcro straps of the MOLLE system on the vest.

Ammunition next, laying out extra magazines for each gun. I liked to have at least two per gun. Three was better, but it was a matter of space. For the shotgun I had a stock mag attached to the butt of the Mossberg that held extra shells. I had a box of shells per shotgun, too.

The last thing was two wooden stakes and a small mallet. That was all that would fit on me and in the backpack.

"That's not a lot of wooden stakes," Hooper said.

"I don't use the stakes unless it's a morgue execution; then legally that's one of the approved methods for carrying out the warrant. But honestly, you just have to take the heart and the head, even in the morgue. Most executioners use blades or metal spikes; they go through meat and bone easier than wood."

"You don't use the stakes for hunts?" Grimes asked.

"Almost never," I said.

The three men exchanged a look.

"I take it from that look that your local executioner was a stake-and-hammer man."

"We were told that most of them are," Grimes said.

I smiled and shook my head. "That's the official line, Lieutenant, but trust me, most of us are silver-bullet-and-blade men."

"Tony didn't believe that any vampire was really dead until he staked them," Rocco said.

I picked up the Mossberg. "All you have to do is take the heart and head. Trust me, every gun sitting here will do the job."

"Even the Smith and Wesson?" Rocco asked.

"I'd have to reload, but eventually, yeah."

"How many times would you have to reload?" Grimes asked.

I looked down at the Smith amp; Wesson. "The Browning has to be reloaded twice, and it holds about twice as much as the Smith and Wesson, so probably I'd have to reload four times, but I could do it. Waste a hell of a lot of ammo, though." I lifted the Mossberg. "The shotguns and the MP5 are my choice for an actual execution, but I can do it with almost everything in my kit." I looked down at everything. "I wouldn't actually want to try to decapitate someone with either of the wrist sheath knives, but they'll reach most vampires' hearts."

I put the shotgun down and opened another bag. I got my vest and helmet out. I really hated the helmet, even more than the vest. I was up against things that could tear my head off my body, so the helmet seemed a little silly to me, but it was part of the new SOP for us. I couldn't wait to see what they'd make us wear, or carry, next.

"So you just have the stakes because they insist on you carrying some of them," Grimes said.

"I follow the rules, Lieutenant, even if I don't agree with them."

"I don't see any metal spikes," Hooper said.

"I don't do morgue stakings if I can help it, and outside that, I trust the guns." I took off my suit jacket and started taking off my shoulder rig. It wouldn't fit under the vest, or rather I couldn't get to the weapons on the rig once the vest went over everything.

"Wait," Grimes said.

I turned and looked at him.

"Move your hair off your back, please."

I moved the nearly waist-length hair so they could see my back. I knew what he'd seen.

"That knife is almost as long as you are from shoulder to waist," he said, "and you've been wearing it the whole time."

"Yep." I let my hair fall back, and like magic, the blade was nearly invisible. Add a suit jacket or a heavy shirt, and it was.

"You have any more surprises on you, Marshal Blake?" he asked.

"No."

"How easy is it to draw?"

"Easy enough that I've had this sheath design redone for me three times, so I could keep carrying it this way."

"Why do you need to have it redone?" Rocco asked.

"Emergency room trips. They always cut everything off if you aren't able-bodied enough to stop them."

"That where you got the arm scars?" Hooper asked.

I looked down at my arms, as if I'd just noticed the old injuries. I touched the mound of scar tissue at my left elbow. "Vampire." I touched the thin scars that started just below it. "Shapeshifted witch." The cross-shaped burn scar was criss-crossed by the scars, so the cross was a little crooked on one side. "Human servants of a vampire. They branded me. Thought it was funny." I turned to my right arm. "Knife fight with a master vampire's human servant." I undid my belt so that I could slip the shoulder rig off, then I held the rig with the gun and knife still on it and used my other hand to lower my shirt from one shoulder. "Same vampire that did my elbow bit through my collarbone, broke it." I pushed the shoulder of my shirt up to show the small shiny scar on it. "Bad guy's girlfriend shot me." Then I smiled, because what else could I do. "We'll have to be better friends for you to see the other scars."

Grimes and Hooper looked a little uncomfortable, but Rocco didn't. We'd passed the point where a little hint could embarrass us. We'd already seen too far inside each other's private lives for that to faze either of us. It was a strange, instant kind of intimacy, what we'd done. I didn't like it much. I couldn't tell how Rocco felt about it. He hadn't liked me peeking at him and his wife, that was all I knew for sure.

I started to put on the vest.

"Are you about to suit up?" Grimes asked.

I looked at him over the collar of the vest; I hadn't fastened the Velcro yet. "I was, why?"

"Unless the vampire you're hunting is inside with Sheriff Shaw, you'll just have to take it off to talk to him."

"They won't let me wear full gear in the police station?" I made it a question.

"Carrying all that, they'll stop you at the front. You'll never get into an interrogation room dressed for battle," Rocco said.

I sighed and slipped the vest back over my head. "Fine, I hate the vest and helmet, anyway. I'll carry them in a bag."

"The vest and helmet will save your life," Grimes said.

"If I weren't hunting things that could peel the vest like an onion and crush the helmet, with my head in it, like an eggshell, maybe. I love having a badge and being part of the Marshals Service, but whoever is making the rules keeps making us rig up like we're hunting human beings. Trust me, what we'll hunt here in Vegas isn't human."

"What would you wear if you had your choice?" Grimes asked.

"Maybe something that was better at stopping slashing. Nothing works good enough against a stabbing attack yet. But honestly, I'd carry the weapons and leave the protective gear at home if I were going in with just me. I move faster without the vest, and speed will usually save my life more than the vest."

"Do you have trouble moving in full gear?" Grimes asked.

"The damn thing weighs around fifty pounds."

"Which is what, half your body weight?" he asked.

I nodded. "About that, I weigh one-ten."

"That would be like putting a hundred-pound vest on most of us. We wouldn't be able to move, either."

Hooper was the one to ask it. "How badly do you move in the vest?"

"I can't tell what's going on with you guys. I keep expecting you to rush me to the hospital to see your men, or to Shaw to get this started, but you're checking me out."

"We're about to trust you with our lives on a hunt that's already killed three of our operators. Speed won't bring them back. Rushing things won't wake up the men in the hospital. All speed will do is get more of my team killed, and that is not acceptable. You're a strong and controlled practitioner, but if you can barely move when you're in full gear, you're going to be an obstacle to overcome, not a help."

I looked into Grimes's very serious face. He had a point. The vest was very new, and when I wasn't working with SWAT, I did my best not to wear it, but it wasn't because I couldn't move in it.

I sighed again, laid the vest with my other gear, and walked toward the weight area. The men were using the weights, but they were watching us, too. I went to the weight bench where tall, dark, and handsome Santa was bench-pressing. Mercy of the straight brown hair was spotting him, which meant the weight was heavy for the big man. Both Santa and Mercy had to weigh well over two hundred pounds, most of it muscle.

I watched Santa's arms bulge with the effort to push the bar up and back into its cradle. Mercy's hands hovered nearby, and at the end he had to guide the bar. That meant it was close to the other man's limit on this exercise.

"Can I jump in for a minute? The lieutenant wants to see if I'm going to slow you guys down."

The two men exchanged a look, and then Santa sat up, smiling. "Tell us what weight you want, and we'll put it on."

"What's on it now?"

"Two-sixty; I was doing reps." He had to add that last so I wouldn't think it was the max weight he could bench. It was a guy thing; I got it.

I stared at the weights, thinking. I was about to do something that the guys would both like, a lot, and hate. I knew I could bench-press the weight; I'd done it at home. Thanks to vampire marks and several different kinds of lycanthropy floating around in my body, I could do things that were amazing even to me. I hadn't been this strong long enough for it to lose its novelty. But I'd never showed it off to human cops before. I debated, but it was the quickest way I could think of to make my point.

The other men had started gathering around. Mercy reached for the weights. "What weight do you want, Blake?"

I waved him away. "This will do."

They exchanged a look, all of them. Some of them smiled. Santa stood and waved at the bench as if to say, It's all yours.

I went to the back of the bench. Mercy moved out of my way. The others moved back and gave me room. I knew I could bench-press it, and that would impress them, but I knew something that would impress them more, and I was tired of having my credentials checked. I wanted to be done with the tests and be out hunting vampires before it got dark. What I needed was something fairly spectacular.

I put my hands on the bar and braced my legs wide enough to get a good stance. I knew I was strong enough to lift it, but my mass wasn't enough to counterbalance it, so I had to rely on other muscles to keep me steady and upright while my arms did the other work.

I got my grip on the bar, worked my stance.

Santa said, "That's two hundred and sixty pounds, Blake."

"I heard you the first time, Santa." I lifted the bar, tensing my stomach and leg muscles to hold me while I curled it. Making it a controlled, pretty curl was the hard part, but I did it. I curled it, then set it back down with a tiny clink.

My breath was coming a little hard, and my whole body felt pumped and full of blood; there was even a little roar in my ears, which meant I shouldn't try to curl that much weight again. So I wouldn't, but... There was absolute silence from the men, as if they'd forgotten to breathe.

I put my hands on my waist and fought to control my breathing; it would all be for nothing if I looked dizzy or unsteady now.

Someone said, "Oh my God."

I looked at the lieutenant and the sergeants where they stood off the edge of the mat. "I can carry my own weight, Lieutenant."

"Hell, you can carry me," Mercy said.

Santa said, "How did you do that? There's not enough of you to lift that much weight."

"Could you do it again?" Grimes asked.

"You mean reps?" I asked.

He nodded.

I grinned. "Maybe, but I wouldn't want to try."

He gave an expression that was almost a smile, then shook his head. "Answer Santa's question, Anita."

"You've heard the rumors. Hell, you checked up on me before I stepped off the plane."

"You're right, I did. So you really are the human servant of your local Master of the City."

"That won't make you this strong," I said.

"I saw your medical records," he said.

"And," I said.

"You're a medical miracle."

"So they tell me."

"What?" Santa asked, looking from one to the other of us.

"So, you really are carrying five different kinds of lycanthropy, but you don't shift."

I nodded. "Yes."

"Wait," Santa said, "that's not possible."

"Actually," Grimes said, "there have been three documented cases in the United States alone; you would be the fourth. Worldwide there have been thirty. People like you are what gave them the idea for the lycanthropy vaccines."

Someone must have made a movement because Grimes said, "Yes, Arrio."

"Is her lycanthropy contagious?"

"Anita," he said.

"Shapeshifters are only contagious in animal form, and I don't have an animal form, so, no."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Not a hundred percent, no. I wouldn't drink my blood, and if you have a cut, you might not want me to bleed on you."

"But you've got five different kinds in your blood, right?" Santa asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Then if you bled on me, I wouldn't get just one, I'd get them all, or nothing, right?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Would it make me be able to do what you just did?"

"You can do what I just did."

He shook his head, frowning. "Able to curl over twice my body weight, so, six-ninety, seven hundred pounds."

"I've seen a shapeshifter about your size that could do it, but I'm not as strong as a real shapeshifter. If I were, I could do reps easy, and I can't."

"So a shapeshifter your size would be even stronger?" Davey, the tall blond with the nice mouth, asked.

"Absolutely." I looked back at the lieutenant. "That's what I mean about the vest and helmet. It just won't protect you from that level of strength."

"It will protect you if you get hit in the chest or head."

"Some."

"You'll wear the full gear when you go out with us, Anita."

"You're the boss."

He smiled. "Reports say you aren't much for following orders."

"I'm not."

"But I'm the boss."

"For these men, this unit, you are, and if I want to work with you, that makes you the boss."

"You have a federal badge. You could try to be the boss."

I laughed. "I've seen the way the men react to you. I could have a dozen federal badges, and that wouldn't make any of these guys see me as their boss."

"It will let you take all your weapons into the main station if you want to rub their faces in it."

"I'm trying to make friends here, not enemies."

"Then you'll be the most polite fed we've met in a while."

I shrugged. "I just want to start hunting these vampires before dark. Tell me what I have to do to make that happen, and I'll do it."

"Collect your gear. We'll take you to Shaw."

"Do I wear my gear or just carry it?"

"You asking my opinion?"

"Yes."

"Carrying it is less aggressive, but they may also see it as a weakness."

"If I asked you to just take me to the crime scene, would you?"

"No."

I sighed. "Fine, take me to Shaw. Let him check under my hood, too."

"Why does that sound dirty?" Santa asked.

"Because everything sounds dirty to you," Mercy said.

Santa grinned. "Not everything."

"Why are you called Santa?" I asked.

He aimed that grin at me. "Because I know who's been naughty and who's been nice."

I gave him a look.

He did a Boy Scout salute. "Honest."

"He's not lying," Spider of the curly brown hair said.

I waved my hands, as if clearing the air. "Fine, whatever that means. Let's go." I started walking toward Grimes, Rocco, Hooper, and my gear.

Mercy called out, loud enough so it would carry, "Tell us, Santa, is Blake naughty or nice?"

I felt something prickle along my back. It made me whirl around and glare at Santa. "I let Cannibal inside my shields; you don't get in."

Santa had a look on his face, as if he were hearing things I couldn't hear. He blinked and looked at me, his eyes a little unfocused, as if he were having to draw himself back from far away. "I can't get past her shields."

"Come on, Blake," Mercy said, "don't you want to know if you're naughty or nice?"

"I'm naughty, Mercer, I've killed too many people to be nice." I didn't wait to see their reaction. I just turned and went for my gear. I'd pack up, and they'd pass me to Sheriff Shaw. Maybe he'd just take Lieutenant Grimes's word that I was okay, but remembering the look on Shaw's face as we drove off, I doubted it. I appreciated everyone's professional caution, but if this kept up, it would be dark before I got to do my job, and I did not want to hunt Vittorio in the dark. He'd mailed me the head of the last vampire hunter who'd tried to kill him; I was betting he'd be happy to cut me up and mail me to someone, too.