Skin Trade
Chapter 39-40

Chapter 39
THE LAST TIME I'd been with SWAT, we'd come through the door with flash-bang grenades and a green light to shoot everything inside the condo but the victim we were trying to save. This time, we knocked.
Sergeant Hooper called out from behind the shield guy, who turned out to be Hitch, who was almost as broad through the shoulders as I was tall. "Vegas Police, search warramt. Open the door!" He had a nice loud voice, a drill sergeant voice. Even being prepared, it made me jump a little. He repeated it twice more.
Victor's energy poured across the heat from behind us, well behind us. Since he wasn't close enough to yell, he'd compromised by sending his energy ahead of him. In some ways it was better than his voice. People might imitate a voice, but no one could imitate that roll of power. In some ways it was not better than his voice. His voice wouldn't have pressed against my throat, like a hand that wanted inside. I had to up my metaphysical shields to get the energy to back off enough for me not to almost taste it. It was like pushing against some huge weight, to move his power away from me. I'd never felt any lycanthrope with this kind of power.
Gregory Minns would feel all that energy coming from his clan's "king," and if he was a good guy, he'd open the door. If he was a bad guy, he'd run, or he'd fight.
I tightened my grip on Hooper's vest and fought to keep my pulse even. I could feel the adrenaline coming off the other men, and my own tension; so much could go wrong. Victor's power just made it worse for me. If I hadn't fought it off, maybe it would have been soothing, but I couldn't afford to embrace it. The tigers inside me liked it too much. I got a glimpse behind my eyes of them putting their heads up and roaring in that coughing, harsh sound that tigers do. My body vibrated with it, and all I could do was fight to keep my pulse even and my breathing slow, because until I lost control of my body, my beasts could not hurt me. Much.
I really wished that Victor had been allowed to talk through the door.
Sanchez said, "What the hell is that? Is it the tiger inside?"
"Quiet," Hooper said.
Sanchez could feel Victor's energy and maybe my tigers. I'd have to remember that he could feel the energy. It might change what I did when we got inside.
Hooper yelled again, "Minns, open up!"
I felt energy moving in the house, almost like one of those infrared pictures, except it was a feeling, not a visual. I almost said, He's at the door, but all I knew for certain was that it was a weretiger. It didn't have to be Minns. I was debating on whether I should say that I could "feel" a tiger on the other side of the door when the weretiger called out.
A man's voice called from behind the door. "I'm opening the door now. Don't shoot me, okay?" The door started to open, but the SWAT never gave him a chance to finish the gesture. They poured in, and I poured with them, dragged along by my hand on Hooper.
There was a lot of yelling. "Hands on your head! Get on your knees!" Minns did what he was told and was in a circle of weapons and officers. He looked calm enough. Calmer, frankly, than he should have been at the center of that circle. The calm bothered me.
His hair was actually pale blond, not white. I caught glimpses of his eyes through the legs and bodies of the officers. The eyes were that pale, perfect tiger blue, and he seemed to have no other goal than to look at me. I didn't like that either.
The white tigress did, though. She paced closer to my surface. I kept controlling my breathing, counting my pulse down, but I could feel Minns's power. Again, like Victor it was more, different, somehow. Something about the dominants of this clan gave them more... crunchy goodness, as if I should have been able to eat the power, and it would have been something with texture and caramel in the middle. Something you had to chew and swallow hard to get down, but it would be sweet, and you'd want another bite.
He stared at me while they cuffed him and put ankle cuffs on, too. They were taking no chances. He let them do whatever they wanted and just kept staring at me, and I seemed unable to move from the weight of that stare.
"I would have opened the door for you, little queen, all you had to do was ask," he said, in a voice that held weight and had too much intensity to it.
Hooper glanced up at me. "Is he talking to you, Anita?"
I just nodded.
Edward touched my arm, and it helped, but I kept staring into those pale eyes. Bernardo actually stepped between me and Minns. He broke the gaze line, and I could suddenly step back. What the fuck was wrong with me?
I stepped away from Minns and the other SWAT and went to stand near the door. Edward asked, low, "What's wrong?"
I shook my head. "I'm not sure."
"You acted like he had vampire gaze and had rolled you."
"I know." I tried to shove the tigers deeper into me, but Victor's energy just rolled over and around me. It was like the air was alive with it. The energy was keeping the tigers closer to the surface of me. Damn it.
Hooper joined us. "What just happened between you and Minns over there?"
I hate explaining metaphysics to the nonpsychic. It's like explaining daylight to someone who's been raised in a cave. You know that fire is light, but how do you explain that the fire that cooks your food can be so bright that it takes up the whole sky? You can't, but you still try.
"I think he likes me."
Hooper gave me a hard look, and it was a good one. His gray eyes were as cold as Edward's could get; almost. "No one makes friends that quick, Blake. You know him, and he knows you."
"I swear to you that I have never met this man before."
"He has a pet name for you, Blake. Little queen; cute. You don't give pet names to people you don't know."
I was debating on how much to try to explain to Hooper when I felt Victor getting closer. I knew he was walking toward the house. Shit.
I shook my head. "I need Victor to tone down his energy or I'm going to drown."
"What?"
Sanchez said, "The weretiger outside is pushing his power like some freaking river at the house. I know it calmed the weretiger on the floor, but my skin is crawling with it, Sonny."
Hooper looked from one to the other of us. He toned down his anger with a visible effort. "So you and Sanchez are picking up on Victor's power?"
"Yes," I said.
"Fine, that explains why you're pale. It doesn't explain how Minns, who you say you've never met, has a pet name for you, and said he'd have opened his door for you if you'd just asked. I'm sorry, that kind of talk says serious girlfriend."
"Or good lay." This from Bernardo.
We all frowned at him. He raised his hands as if to say sorry. "I'm just saying that some women have that effect on you."
"Don't help me," I said.
He grinned at me and wandered back toward the center of the room and our waiting "suspect." Hooper gave me that cold look again. "He's right, though."
"Look, little queen is what the tigers call me, apparently."
"Why, and how would Minns know that, since you just got to town today?"
Sanchez and I both looked toward the door because we could feel all that power about to walk in. Sanchez actually raised his M4 up but didn't point it; I fought to just caress mine. Victor came through the door, like we'd known he would.
Sanchez said, "Sarge, can you tell the leading citizen over there to tone the power down? I'm going to get a power headache."
"You tell him, Sanchez, the marshal and I aren't through talking yet."
Sanchez gave me a look, almost of sympathy, then went for the door and Victor with his police escort. Hooper turned back to me. Edward had stepped up beside me, sort of protective, maybe. Olaf had drifted over, but was keeping his eye mostly on the weretiger. Nice to know he didn't let his interest in me interfere with business. I couldn't tell if Edward was supporting my cause with Hooper, or if he was closer to me for Olaf's benefit.
"Shaw said you knew more than you were saying, but I was willing to believe that he was letting personal issues cloud his judgment." Hooper shook his head. "But now your little friend over there has outed you, Blake. When did you meet him?"
The air seemed less heavy suddenly, as if I'd been struggling to breathe but hadn't realized it until the moment there was more air. I looked over at the door and found Victor inside the room and Sanchez giving me a thumbs-up. I returned the gesture. It was actually kind of nice not to be the only one bothered by the psychic shit. Freakiness likes company.
"I met Gregory Minns just minutes ago. You've seen all the interaction I've ever had with him."
"You are lying," Hooper said.
"She's not lying," Edward said.
"I don't need to hear from her boyfriend."
"Would it do any good to say that he's not my boyfriend?" I said.
"No," Hooper said, "the minute that weretiger called you sweet nicknames, you lost credibility with me, Blake."
"I am sorry that my attempt to calm Gregory spread to you and Officer Sanchez, Marshal Blake," Victor said as he walked toward us. His power was tight like a drum. I could feel the vibration of it, but that was all. He'd locked it down tight.
"As long as it wasn't on purpose, we're cool."
"You've felt what my mother can do; trust me, on purpose would be worse."
I nodded. I believed him.
"When did you first meet Marshal Blake, Mr. Belleci?" Hooper asked.
"This afternoon," he said.
"When did Gregory Minns first meet her?"
Victor frowned at him. "I don't believe they have met."
"He called her his little queen. That's pretty personal for strangers."
Victor smiled, then fought not to. "Little queen is our nickname for Marshal Blake."
"You met her this afternoon, and she already has a nickname; right. And Minns, who just met her, knew the nickname enough to use it. Don't yank my chain. One of you, or all of you, are lying."
"I swear to you that we just met Marshal Blake. Her rather unusual psychic abilities hit the radar for the tigers as a little queen. It's not a personal nickname but more a title."
"And she earned this title how?"
"By the feel of her psychic energy."
"Sanchez," Hooper said.
"She is a powerful psychic, Sarge."
"I know what Cannibal said, but I need to know if her power would do what Victor here says, or whether they're all lying."
"She shields good. I'd have to read her on purpose to answer that question, and that's against psychic protocol without permission of the other psychic, or except in an emergency situation where lives are in danger."
"You sound like you're quoting regs," I said.
He nodded. "I am."
"Cannibal is just outside with the doc. He could read you again," Hooper said.
I shook my head. "I won't give permission for him to be in my head again."
"Then I want Sanchez to read you. I want to know if you are powerful enough to set off the weretigers like this."
"It may not be as powerful for him, since he's human," Victor said.
"He's my practitioner, and I want him to read her, and you, stay the fuck away from my team."
I sighed and turned to Sanchez. "What do you need from me to make this work?"
"Drop your shields," Sanchez said.
I shook my head. "I can't drop them all."
"Ease down, then," he said.
"Can Victor be farther away?"
"Why?" Hooper asked.
"I seem to have trouble shielding against his clan. I don't know why, but their power seems to fuck with me."
Hooper said, "Georgie, escort Mr. Belleci outside the building."
Georgie came and did it, without a question. It was one of the things that most of the cops were better at than those of us in the preternatural marshal program: following orders without debate.
Victor let himself be led out. Then the others moved back a little, as if we'd asked, though we hadn't. Sanchez and I stood in the middle of Minns's living room, with its dark brown carpet and nondescript living room set. People always want the houses of the preternatural to be unusual, but in truth, most of them look like everyone else's. Going furry once a month doesn't make you that different.
Sanchez slipped off more of his headgear, his black hair wet with sweat. "Ready?"
I took a deep breath and eased down my shields. This far from Jean-Claude and all my people, I wasn't dropping all of it. No way. It was more like cracking a window on a car to let the breeze inside.
Sanchez took his glove off one hand and held it near me, as if he could feel heat. "God, your aura crackles with energy. It's like if you let all your shields down, you'd burn." Then his eyes rolled back into his head, behind fluttering eyelids. "But it would burn black, as if the night could catch fire and eat the world."
He stumbled, and I reached for him automatically. His hand convulsed on mine, and suddenly my shields came down. We were both on our knees, as if we'd been hit. The psychic hammer had hit us both, and there was nothing we could do but ride the power. I hadn't thought that they might have another practitioner that would scare me. I was so used to being the biggest bugbear in the room psychically that it had never occurred to me that Sanchez might be one, too. Now, it was too late, and the bear was going to eat us both.
Chapter 40
SANCHEZ HAD TRIED to peek behind my partially raised shields, and he was too powerful, or it was like when we shook hands and he alone of all of the practitioners spiked me. I had a pure human mind-fuck me for the second time in one day. It was a record.
I felt his power, but it was like looking at calm water; you don't always see the rocks just below that will tear the bottom out of your boat and sink you.
One minute we were calm; the next he'd ripped my shields open like a wound. His power poured into that wound, but other things had been waiting, and they followed on the tail of his energy like a mugger coming in behind your key.
I felt vampire first, powerful, but just vampire. It breathed in on Sanchez's coattails. I didn't fight it, because I hoped it was Vittorio. I drew the taste of his power into me like wine that you hold in your mouth, warming it until the bouquet of it fills your mouth, your nose, your senses. If this was him, I wanted the scent of him to stay with me, because there was a chance that I might be able to track him through his own power, if he would just give me a little more of it.
Sanchez said, "What is that?"
"Bad guy," I whispered.
I felt him try to push at the power, too. "Don't help me," I said.
"I'm pretty good."
"Don't...," but I didn't have time to finish the sentence because something else found us. Marmee Noir was the Queen of All Vampires. But that didn't quite prepare you for the wave of living darkness that poured over us both. It drowned out the subtle energy of Vittorio's daytime power, if it had even been him. She drowned everything else.
I was left kneeling on cold stone, in a cavern lit by torches. Sanchez knelt with me, his hand still in mine. He looked up. "What is this?" I knew our bodies were still in the house in Vegas, but our minds, not so much.
Something moved in the shadows between the torches. She was cloaked in blackness, and I couldn't tell if it was a black cloak or if she had formed herself from the darkness and it only looked like clothes. Her delicate foot stepped into the light, and tiny seed pearls caught the light, with bits of shiny black jet embroidered between them. I'd seen those shoes once before when she almost manifested physically in St. Louis.
Her body should have been upstairs in a room where she'd been hidden away for over a thousand years, but there she stood. Was it a dream? Was she really awake?
She answered my thought. "My body sleeps, but I am no longer trapped by flesh."
"What is she?" Sanchez asked.
"Shall we show him, necromancer?"
"No," I said.
"Let us see if his mind survives."
"NO!" I screamed it, and tried to bring us back out, but she flung her arms wide, and the cloak was darkness, because it stretched out and out, up and up, until we knelt staring into the perfect blackness of a starless night. The scent of jasmine choked me. I couldn't taste anything else.
Sanchez clung to my hand. "Anita, Anita, are you all right?"
I couldn't talk, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. I clung to him because he was all I had to cling to, but she was pouring herself down my throat. Once I'd thought she meant to kill me that way, but now I saw her thoughts too clearly. She didn't want to kill me, she wanted to possess me. Her body upstairs had lain too long unused, and she could not mend it. She wanted a new one. She wanted me.
There was a light in the dark, suddenly, like a bright hot star. The light came like the rising of the sun, and she screamed as she fell back. I came to myself in the living room in Sanchez's and Edward's arms. The room was full of crosses, glowing bright like stars. Everyone's cross was glowing as I fought to breathe. Edward turned me over so I could cough out onto the carpet. I spat out something clear and too thick for water. It smelled like flowers.
Edward held me until I was done and too weak to move.
"Was that our killer?" Hooper asked at last. "Was that our vampire?"
"It was a vampire," Sanchez said, "but I don't think it's here in Vegas."
I shook my head. My voice came out hoarse. "It's nothing to do with Vegas."
Sanchez said, "The Darkness wants to eat you."
"Yeah, she does. I have my shields for a reason, Sanchez. Don't fuck with them again."
"I'm sorry," he said. "What the fuck is she?"
I shook my head. "Nightmares."
"Fuck," he said.
"Sanchez, talk to me," Hooper said.
"Marshal Blake is powerful enough, Sarge. She's powerful enough, if you see through her shields, she's powerful enough to make the tigers call her Annie Fucking Oakley, if they have a title for it."
"What did you see, Sanchez?" Hooper said.
He looked at me, and we had a moment of understanding. He said, "Nightmares, Sarge. She fights nightmares, and they fight back."
"What the hell does that mean?"
Sanchez shook his head and clung to his sergeant's arm as he helped him stand. "It means I want to feel the sun on my face, and I never, ever want to make Blake drop her shields again. I really didn't mean to do that, by the way, Marshal. I'm sorry."
I tried to sit up and found that I could, though Edward's hand was a good thing to steady against. "I would say it's okay, but it's not. You almost got me hurt, Sanchez, bad hurt."
"I know"-Sanchez gave a little laugh that sounded wrong-"I saw what wanted to hurt you, Blake. I wish I hadn't seen it. How the fuck do you sleep at night?"
Edward helped me stand, and I almost fell. It was Olaf who took my other arm, but I wasn't steady enough to pull away. In that moment, help was okay. "I sleep fine," I said.
"Then you are an iron-willed motherfucking bastard." He started toward the door, so shaky that Hooper called another officer over to help him to the door.
When he was outside, Hooper turned to me. "Sanchez is solid. What the fuck did he see to shake him that bad?"
"You don't want to know," I said.
"Our holy items lit up like the freaking Fourth of July; what kind of vampire can cause that from a distance?"
"Pray that you never find out, Sergeant." I took a deep breath and let go of both men. When Edward let go, so did Olaf.
Hooper looked from me to Edward. "Do you know what it is, Forrester?"
Edward just said, "Yes."
"What is it?"
"The ultimate vampire," he said.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"She's the queen of them," I said, "and she's more powerful than anything I've ever felt. She's still in Europe somewhere. Pray that she never comes to America."
"She did all that from Europe?" Hooper sounded skeptical.
I glared at him. "Yeah, she did. Your man stripped my shields, like taking away your vest just before shooting a gun at your chest. You saw what happened to me."
"I didn't mean for Sanchez to fuck you up today, Blake."
"Sure," I said.
He frowned at me. "I fucking hate the psychic shit, but I didn't mean for you to get hurt." With that, he walked toward the door.
Edward leaned over me. "Are you all right?"
I shook my head, then said, "Sure."
"Liar," Bernardo said. But I noticed he'd been standing farther away than either Edward or Olaf. There were a lot of reasons that I didn't count on him.
"Fuck you," I said.
He grinned. "Hopefully."
I rolled my eyes at him, but it helped put things in perspective. The Mother of All Darkness was apparently just waiting outside my shields for a chance to eat me. I was so scared my skin was cold. I'd go out into the desert heat. I'd warm up. It would be all right. I tried to believe that, but I stared down at what I'd spit up on the carpet.
I asked, "What is that shit?"
Edward said the one thing I hate to hear him say. "I don't know." When Edward doesn't know the answers, we are so fucked.