[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade (39 page)

“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.

 

 

VICTOR WENT TO stand in front of Morgan. “Detective Morgan, without Marshal Blake and me, you have no hope of taking Martin alive.”

I said, “We have two officers missing, presumed injured or dead. It's not about taking him alive anymore, Victor.”

“But if he dies, we lose the chance to find Vittorio's daytime lair,” Victor said.

I shook my head. “It doesn't matter. We could pretend that it does, but your tiger gave up his safety when he touched the officers.”

“You won't even try to get them to bring him in alive?”

“They don't trust me anymore, Victor. I went too weird on them.”

“Your friend Forrester, then.”

“Until they find the missing officers, it doesn't matter.”

“What if killing Martin means you never find the officers' bodies?”

I turned to Morgan. “What about that? That Martin Bendez may know where your officers are?”

“I'll radio it in, but you called it, Blake. The moment he touched our officers, we're not going to be able to contain this.”

“He is a very powerful weretiger,” Victor said. “He will not be easy to kill.”

“That a threat?” Morgan asked.

“No, honesty. If Martin has gone rogue, and you won't allow us to try to use metaphysics to contain him, then killing him from a distance is your only hope.”

“So you're telling me to try to get our men to take him alive, and to shoot him from a safe distance.” Morgan smiled and shook his head, and I knew the smile for what it was now, his version of blank face. “You can't have both, Victor.”

“I know that, Detective. I'm telling you I'd rather bring him in alive for the information he holds, but without the marshal and me, you have no hope of taking him alive. So if we are truly to be sidelined, then you must get a sniper in place with silver ammunition and take him out.”

“I'll give your advice to my superiors.” Morgan was still smiling, but his tone made it clear he either wouldn't do what Victor asked or thought the advice was amusing.

I didn't find him amusing; I found him honest. Morgan walked away, maybe even to do what Victor wanted done, but I doubted it.

I looked around at the other officers. “Sorry you're missing out on the tiger hunt babysitting us.”

“My wife won't be sorry,” one man said. His name tag read
Cox
. He was older, maybe late thirties.

“I'm sorry,” one of the other officers said, “I mean a real hunt for a weretiger. How often does that happen?” I turned to find that this officer, Shelby by his name tag, looked bright and eager. I fought the urge to sniff the air and go,
Hmm, rookie
.

“When you've been on the job long enough,” Cox said, “you'll know that going home alive is win enough.”

“Getting married made you a wussy,” Shelby said.

Other officers joined in the good-natured ribbing. Cox took it like the ten-year veteran he probably was; I knew what he meant. I didn't even have my ten years in, but getting home alive to the people I loved had become more important to me than catching the bad guy. It's a grown-up attitude, but sometimes it means it's time to change jobs. Or ride a desk. I'd suck at desk work.

It made me feel less wussy that Edward had turned down a contract to hunt Marmee Noir. When Death himself, his nickname among the vamps, starts turning down hunts so he can get home alive to his family, the world has become a different place. Or maybe the world is the same, and it was Edward and I who had changed.

Everyone's radios went off at the same time: handheld, shoulder mic, all of it. I caught the dispatcher's words. Someone had hit the emergency button on their handheld. The next thing we heard was a full-out
officer down
call.

Everyone ran for their cars. I stuck at Cox's heels. Shelby, too; apparently they were riding together. “Take me with you, Cox.”

He hesitated at the door of his car while car after car squealed away, sirens and lights roaring. “Orders say you stay here.”

“Forrester is my partner.”

“You guys don't run in pairs,” Cox said.

“He's my rabbi.”

“I heard he was more your Svengali,” Shelby said.

Cox said, “Shut up, Shelby.”

Shelby did.

Cox and I had one of those long stares, and then he nodded. “Get in.”

Victor glided up beside me.

“Not him,” Cox said as he opened the door.

“If one of my tigers has attacked officers, I might be able to stop him.”

I wasn't sure it was a good idea, but . . . “Let him ride; if we leave him behind and he gets hurt, we'll get shit for that, too.”

Cox cursed softly.

“I know,” I said, “some days you just choose which ass-chewing you're gonna get.”

“Ain't that the truth.” He got in, and Shelby got in with him. Since he hadn't said no, Victor and I got in the back. Lights and sirens went, and we were screaming out after the other cars. I was still hunting for the seatbelt when we went around a corner fast enough to throw me into Victor.

He put an arm around me, held me close, and I was left with another problem. How do you make someone who can bench-press a small car let go of you, short of bleeding him? Answer: you don't.

 

 

I SPOKE OVER the noise of the sirens. “Let go of me.”

He leaned his mouth in closer and spoke next to my ear. “We have little time, and there are things you need to know.”

I fought my muscles not to tense and keep trying to push him away. I tried to relax into him, but finally had to settle for just nodding. “Talk.”

“I felt your power in Gregory's house.”

“That wasn't just my power. Sanchez had messed with me.”

“I do not mean when the energy changed and was not you.” So he had felt Marmee Noir. I wondered if he knew what it had been, if he'd sensed Her. “I felt your energy, Anita. Together we might be able to force Bendez out into the open.”

“How?” The car careened around another corner, and only Victor's death grip on the door and me kept us still. I wondered, if we wrecked, would he be able to hold me? I needed my seatbelt, but he kept whispering in my ear, kept holding me close, and I kept not moving away.

“I can sense him, and combined, you and I might force him into the open.”

“How do we combine?”

“I read the article you wrote for
The Animator
about combining powers between yourself and your two fellow animators for raising more and older dead. It is not dissimilar to that.”

I wanted to turn, to see his face, because he'd read the business journal for my profession. The only reason to do that was to research me. But turning my head would have put those whispering lips from ear to mouth, and that didn't feel like an improvement. The car was going about a hundred miles an hour, and Cox drove like a maniac in a line of maniacs. The speed, the driving, put my pulse in my throat and scared the hell out of me, but still I let Victor hold me, still I hadn't pushed away and gone for a seatbelt. I wore a seatbelt like a religion, but it was like I couldn't move. I could only listen to that soft, masculine voice in my ear. It all sounded so reasonable, and in that moment, I was no longer certain if it was really reasonable or if Victor was rolling me like some sort of vampire. I couldn't tell anymore. That couldn't be good, could it?

The car slid to a screeching stop. Cox opened all the doors, and Victor let me slide away from him, though his hand slid down to hold mine. But just the hand was better. I could think without him wrapped around me. Fuck.

Cox put a hand on Victor's shoulder, shaking his head. “Civilian, stay in the car.”

I kept pulling on Victor's hand. He kept trying to hold on. Officer Cox said, “Let go of Marshal Blake, Mr. Belleci.”

Victor's fingers fell away from me, and I pulled to make it happen sooner. Something was wrong when he touched me. Something that had never happened with any other wereanimal, not even the ones that were my animals to call.

The moment Victor wasn't touching me, it was as if I could draw a deeper breath. Surrounded by sirens, lights, police officers, guns, and not yet knowing what officer was down and how deep the shit; and it was already better. I moved the MP5 on its tactical sling to my hands, ready to go, and followed at Cox's heels. He was tall enough that his back was my view, but that was okay. He was letting me come along, and eventually I'd find Edward.

Then something flew over our heads. We all ducked instinctively, and it took a moment for my mind to catch up to what my eyes had seen. Someone in Vegas PD uniform had just been thrown completely over our heads, to hit on the far side of a second line of cars.

“Fuck!” Shelby said.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

 

THE NEXT SOUND was gunfire, a lot of it. But the moment I saw the airborne officer, I knew there would be. Martin Bendez was about to die, and there was no way to save him. Whatever information he had was gone. The real kicker was that if I'd been near the front of the line, I'd have helped kill him. When a wereanimal goes a certain level of apeshit, you run out of options fast.

Cox eased forward, and I followed. Shelby brought up the rear. It looked like almost every other officer in Vegas was already clustered at the front area. They'd made a mass around some point I couldn't see. I wasn't tall enough to spot Edward or even Olaf from the back of the crowd, but somehow I knew that Edward, at least, would be near the front.

He was like one of those antitank missiles. Point front toward the enemy, and make sure you know where to stand.

I didn't try to push; Cox did it for me. He just eased us through the crowd. I followed in his wake. Shelby got a little separated, but then he took up more room than I did, so people were more likely to not let him push through. Sometimes smaller is better.

We wormed our way close enough to the front that I glimpsed Olaf towering over everyone. I knew that Edward had to be close to him. I left Cox behind and continued to work my way closer to the big guy. I actually saw Bernardo first, then Edward, all with their guns still out. All still pointed at something I couldn't see on the ground. Most of the rest of the police had eased up; some had even holstered.

“It's dead.” I recognized Sergeant Hooper's voice but couldn't see him yet.

“It's not dead until it shifts back to human form,” Edward said.

“What are you talking about, Marshal?” another man asked.

I eased up until I was just behind them. I could glimpse a white-and-black-furred body on the ground. “As long as it's furry,” I said, “it's still alive. Dead, they turn back to their original shape.”

Edward almost looked back at me, but kept his eyes and his gun on the downed tiger. “Better late than never,” he said.

I shouldered my way between him and Bernardo, and aimed my gun with theirs. “Sorry I missed it.”

“No,” Bernardo said, “you're not.” Something in the way he said it made me wonder what else I'd missed besides the body on the ground.

“It isn't shifting, just like the tiger in St. Louis,” Olaf said.

I settled the MP5 tighter in my arms, but not too tight, and sighted down at the still form. I couldn't see any movement, or sense anything but stillness, but the one in St. Louis had done that, too. That one had nearly killed me and Edward's stepson, Peter. It had killed one of our people.

“I know,” I said, and felt my body go still, sinking away into that silence where I went if I had time in a fight. It was a good quiet place to kill things from, the static narrowing inside my head.