Skin Trade

29

DOMINO CALMED DOWN enough to stand beside Rick and Ava in the big elevator. It was one marked Private, and seemed to go only to one floor. The penthouse, I was assuming.

“Sorry,” Rick said, and sounded like he meant it, “but they can’t go into the private chambers with this many weapons on them.”

“We can’t leave the weapons in the car,” I said. “New rules. Once a warrant is in play, we have to be able to do our jobs at full capacity at any minute, and we are not allowed to leave our weapons in a place where civilians could get hold of them.”

“You lie,” Domino said.

The black and white tigers growled inside me. It was hint enough. The tigresses didn’t like me backing down to any of the males. I took a step closer to him, which put Ava between us. Rick put a hand back on the other man’s arm, just sort of automatically. “Domino, if you can’t smell that I’m telling the truth, then you aren’t dominant enough to be this much trouble.”

He growled at me, low and rumbling, like close thunder. “I will not answer your call, little queen.”

“I haven’t called you anywhere.”

“You did,” he said, “you called us all.”

Rick put an arm across the other man’s chest, moving smoothly into a more solid hold. “You did, Ms. Blake. A few months back, you did do that.”

I sighed, and the anger began to fade, until the tigers inside me swatted at me from the inside out. I flinched, couldn’t help it. I was getting used to the sensation of invisible claws cutting me up, but it was almost impossible not to react a little. It wasn’t real damage. I knew it was metaphysical pain. It hurt, but it did not bleed me. They’d actually put me through medical tests to make certain of that, at one point. It was just pain. I could ignore it, sort of. When the tigers got this bitchy, I had to pay some attention, or it got worse.

The elevator, which I’d expected to be quick but wasn’t, opened. Two more uniformed security guards were there, replacements for the two we’d left downstairs. None of the tigers stepped out; they were all looking at me.

“I didn’t mean to put out the welcome mat to everyone, but I won’t apologize for it either.” The tigers were creeping closer inside me. I said what I hoped they wanted to hear. “If I was queen enough to call you, then it’s not up to you if you answer that call.”

Ava and Rick sandwiched Domino between them, as he tried to move forward. “You bitch.”

There was another swat inside me, as if the white and black tigers were trying to play basketball with my spine. Fuck, it hurt.

Crispin touched my shoulders, and the touch helped. The white tiger eased back. He wasn’t as dominant as she wanted, but he was one of hers. The black tiger, and I mean black, like a black leopard, with stripes showing only in bright light, came forward, growling and hissing, flashing those huge canines.

“Please, tell me that Domino here isn’t the only black tiger you’ve got.”

“The black clan is nearly extinct,” Ava said.

I drew one of Crispin’s hands across my face until I could smell the warm scent of his wrist. I rubbed my cheek against the heat of him. The white tiger rose closer to the surface and pushed the black one down. There were other colors of tiger inside me. I had a damn rainbow, impossible colors that had never occurred in any zoo, though I had learned that every tiger inside me had once existed as a real animal. It had just been a few thousand years for some of the subspecies. They were just legends now.

“Maybe if we get out of the elevator and get a little more room,” Edward said.

“You do not order us about, human,” Domino said.

“He’s got a badge; you don’t,” I said, still being too up close and personal with Crispin’s arm and hand. It was hard to be tough as nails when kissing someone’s hand, but some days you do the best you can.

“The marshal is right, let’s step outside.” Rick’s voice sounded just a little strained, which meant he was holding on to his friend even tighter than it looked. That wasn’t good.

“What will your friend do once we’re somewhere without security cameras?” I asked around the sweet smell of Crispin’s arm.

“He’ll do what Chang-Bibi tells him to do,” Ava said.

“And that would be what?” I asked.

“What?” Ava asked.

“What does she want him to do? Obviously he’s not happy about it, whatever it is.”

“You,” Crispin said.

Ava said, “Crispin!”

I said, “What?”

“You,” he repeated from behind me, “our queen wants them both to do you.”

“Crispin,” Ava said, and her face wasn’t friendly anymore, almost angry.

Bernardo leaned in and said, “I’d really rather have more room for the fight than the elevator.”

I stepped out of the elevator, and everyone followed. I knew why Crispin and the other marshals waited for me, maybe, but I finally realized that at some level the weretigers were treating me like what Domino had said, a little queen. They weren’t doing it on purpose, I’d have bet on that. It was all unconscious, which made it both useful and a little scary.

The hallway was white and cream, and much more elegant than the casino or the elevator. I waited until everyone was standing in the cool, wide hallway.

“Look, Domino, this is news to me. I’ll make you a deal. You tone it down and I’ll promise you won’t be on the menu for sex.” In my head, I thought, Food for anger, maybe, but not sex.

He frowned at me.

Crispin tried to help. “She means she won’t do you if you don’t want to do her.”

“You can’t speak for anyone,” Ava said.

The uniformed guards were looking at us, with their hands on the butts of their guns. They saw the badges, but they saw the guns, too, and they’d picked up that we might not be getting along with the weretigers. It would be interesting to see where their loyalties would divide.

Edward leaned in. “Either we leave or we go with them. Your call.”

I sighed. Leaving was such a good idea. But the bodies in the morgue would still be dead. The head they’d mailed to me would still be waiting to come back to its body for burial. I had smelled tiger on the body in the morgue here. I wasn’t wrong, and for clues about weretigers, this was the place to come.

“Anita,” Edward said, softly.

“With them, we go with them.”

“What about their weapons?” Domino said.

“We have a gun room, if we could lock up some of them?” Rick said.

“We don’t give up our weapons,” Olaf said.

“Your warrant excludes us, and you don’t have other police with you. You do not go before our queen with automatic weapons on you,” Rick said, and it was matter-of-fact.

“Would you let someone see your Master of the City armed like this?” Ava asked.

I thought about it, then shook my head. “Probably not.”

“Let’s get some privacy, and we’ll discuss the weapons,” Edward said. He’d glanced up at the hallway, near the ceiling. His gaze had found the security cameras. I wondered if it was a law in Vegas, the cameras?

“Sure.”

I put Crispin’s hand more firmly in my left hand. He squeezed back. I said to Domino, “I’m not into rape; if you don’t want me, fine. I’m not crazy about you either.”

He almost snarled, and Rick suddenly had a two-armed grip on him. “I must obey my queen,” Domino growled. The energy of his beast pushed off him. I braced for it to hit me like a kidney punch thrown from inches away, but it was completely different. No violence, no electric rush. It was like being bathed in a pool of warm, expensive perfume. Except the scent didn’t hit my nose. Can something have a scent that hits your brain but not your nose? It was as if the “perfume” hit something deeper inside me. The white tigress and the black paced closer to the surface, opening their mouths in that grimace/growl, so they could taste the scent on the tops of their mouths where the Jacobson organ is located. He smelled… good.

I backed up and slid my arm around Crispin. His arm hesitated at the touch of the MP5 on its sling, then just kept moving until he held me close, our bodies touching all the way down side to side. Touching Crispin helped clear my head, but the tigers growled at me. They liked Domino better now.

Domino had gone quiet in Rick’s grip. Those orange-fire eyes were looking at me differently now. “You smell… like home.” He didn’t sound angry now, more puzzled.

I needed to leave. It was a bad idea to get closer to any of the tigers. But… all that seemed at risk was my virtue; somehow that didn’t seem worth another cop’s life. If I got a clue here that saved lives, would it be worth it? Hell, yes. Did I want to add another man to my menu? Hell, no. But sometimes a girl’s got to do what a man’s got to do, or something like that. In that moment, I was angry. Angry that metaphysics would probably help solve the crime, but it was going to fuck me up again. Probably literally.