Skin Trade

49

THE MUSIC WAS loud, though not the ear-jarring loud of some clubs. The music sounded tired, or maybe that was just me. My eyes adjusted and saw small tables scattered around a surprisingly large room. There was a main stage and smaller table/stages with seats around them. It was before seven o’clock, and men were already sitting in the darkened room. Women crawled around on the table/stages, as nude as the sign promised. I averted my eyes, because some views should be seen by only your gynecologist or a lover.

The main stage was empty, but huge. It had a small runway and a circular area with seats around it. I’d never seen a stage like it in any strip club, outside an old movie.

Victor led us through the tables, and we followed, because having me carried in front of the customers would not help our cover story.

Edward didn’t try to comfort me; he just kept his arm flexed and solid under my double-handed grip and walked slowly. Olaf and Bernardo were still behind us. Victor got to a small door to one side of the main stage long before I managed to get there. The pain had gone past just pain and was dizziness. My vision was beginning to spot, and that was not good. How much blood had I lost, and how much was I losing?

The world narrowed down to concentrating on moving my feet. The pain in my stomach was growing distant, as my vision started to blur and run in light and dark streamers around me. I had a death grip on Edward’s arm and trusted him to keep me from running into anything.

Edward’s voice. “Anita, we’re through. Anita, you can stop walking.” He had to grab my shoulder, make me look at him. I just stared at him, seeing his face but not understanding why the lights were brighter.

A hand touched my forehead. “Her skin is cool to the touch,” Olaf said.

Edward picked me up, and that hurt, too, enough that I cried out, and the world swam in bright streamers. I concentrated on not throwing up, and that helped me through the pain. Then we were in a room that was dim again, but not as dark as the club. They laid me on a table underneath a light. There was cloth underneath me, and the crinkle of plastic underneath that.

Someone was fumbling at my left arm. I saw a man I didn’t know, and said, “Edward.”

“I’m here,” and he came to stand by my head.

Victor’s voice. “This is our doctor. He really is a doctor, and he’s patched a lot of my people up. He’s very good at sewing us up so we don’t scar.”

“This will sting a little,” the doctor said. He put an IV in me and started fluids. I was in shock. I had only an impression of dark hair and dark skin, and that he was more ethnic than either Bernardo or me. Beyond that, he was sort of blurry.

“How much blood did she lose?” he asked.

“It didn’t look like that much in the car,” Edward said.

There was movement, and I started to try to look at it, but Edward caught my face between his hands. “Look at me, Anita.” It was the way a parent would try to keep you from seeing the big bad doctor.

“Oh,” I said, “that’s not good.”

He smiled. “What, I’m not interesting enough? I can get Bernardo for you to gaze up at. He’s prettier.”

“You’re teasing me, trying to distract me. Shit, what’s about to happen?”

“He doesn’t want to give you painkillers, between the blood loss and the shock. If we were in a hospital with more equipment, he’d chance it, but without it, he doesn’t want to take that risk.”

I swallowed hard, and this time it wasn’t nausea, but fear. “There are four claw marks,” I said.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes and tried to slow my pulse, and fought off the urge to get off the table and run for it. “I don’t want to do this.”

“I know,” he said, but he kept his hands on my face, not exactly holding me but keeping me looking at him.

Olaf said, from somewhere off to the right, “Anita has healed worse than this. They did not have to sew her wounds in St. Louis.”

“That’s because she was healing too fast to need it,” Edward said.

“Why can’t she do that now?” he asked.

I’d fed off the swan king, and through him every swanmane in all of America. It had been an amazing rush of power. Enough to save my life, and Richard’s, and Jean-Claude’s. We’d all been terribly hurt. So much energy that even later when I’d been cut up much worse than this, I healed it scar free in record time, almost like a real lycanthrope. But I didn’t want to explain that to strangers, so out loud I said, “Don’t have the energy.”

“She’d need a really big feed,” Edward said.

“Ah,” Olaf said, “the swans.”

“Do you mean the ardeur?” Victor asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How big a feed would you need?” he asked.

“She fed before she was hurt. I don’t think sex in this condition would be that fun.”

I seconded that.

Hands raised my shirt back, away from the wound.

I tried to see, and said, “What’s happening? What is he doing?”

The doctor’s voice. “I’m just cleaning the wound. Okay?”

“No, but yes.”

“Just look at me, Anita.” Edward’s pale blue eyes were staring at me upside down. I’d never have said his face was kind, but now there was sympathy where I’d never thought to see it.

Hands began to clean the wound with something cold and stingy. “Crap,” I said.

“I was told that she isn’t to be scarred. If she moves this much, I can’t promise that.”

“Who made you promise that?” Victor asked.

“You know who,” he said, and sounded frightened enough for me to catch it.

Edward pressed my face a little harder, “Anita, you need to hold still.”

“I know,” I said.

“Can you do it?” he asked.

“Who?” Victor asked the doctor.

“Bibiana.”

“We need to hurry,” Victor said, “my mother knows. Someone has talked to her. I’d rather not have Anita here when she arrives.”

“Hold still,” Edward said.

The doctor cleaned a little too deep, and I moved again, my hands convulsing on the table. “I can’t not move,” I finally admitted.

“Bernardo, Olaf,” he said.

“Shit,” I said. I did not want to be held down, but… there was no way I wasn’t going to fight some. I couldn’t not.

It was funny how none of us argued that we didn’t want to be here when Victor’s mom arrived. She’d almost rolled me under her power when I was well; this weak, this hurt… I didn’t know if I could keep her out of my head.

Bernardo took my right arm and held it in two places. Victor took my other arm with the IV drip still in it. When I felt a hand on either of my thighs, I knew whose hands were left to touch me: Olaf.

“Shit,” I said.

“Just look at me, Anita. Talk to me.”

“You talk to me,” I said.

I felt hands on my stomach.

“What are you doing?” And I hated how high and frightened my voice sounded.

“I’m going to start stitching. I am sorry to cause you pain.” Then I felt the prick of the first needle pass, but it would not be the last. To avoid scars they’d use a finer needle, a finer thread. It would take more time, more stitches all together. I wasn’t sure my vanity was worth it.

Edward talked to me, while the others tried to hold me still. He talked about Donna and the kids. He whispered about missions in South America where I’d never gone with him, and he’d killed things I’d never seen outside books. It was more personal details than he’d ever given me. If I could just lie still, he’d keep whispering his secrets.

I kept waiting for the pain to dull, but some pain doesn’t. This stayed sharp and nauseating, and the sensation of my skin being pulled together was more than my stomach could take.

“Going to be sick,” I managed to say.

“She’s going to be sick,” Edward said, and the hands moved away. I tried to roll too fast onto my side, and lost the food I’d tried to keep down at the last murder scene. Vegas was turning out to be a real fun town.

The pain in my stomach was fresh and cutting somewhere in the middle of vomiting. The doctor wiped my mouth for me, then laid me back on my back. “She’s pulled some of the stitches out.”

“Sorry,” I managed.

The doc sounded angry now. “I need her held down; she’s still moving, and if she keeps throwing up from the pain, the stitches may not hold.”

“What do you want us to do?” Victor asked.

I was just happy that he wasn’t sewing me up. They could talk forever if he just didn’t start again. I realized it wasn’t just the pain, but the sensations.

“Hold her,” the doctor said.

The fluids had helped clear my mind and my vision, so that I could see him clearly now. He was African American, hair cut close to his head, medium build, small sure hands. He was wearing a green surgical gown over his clothes, along with the gloves to match.

Edward’s hands went from my face to pressing my shoulders to the table. Victor took my legs and let Olaf have the arm he’d been holding; when the man protested, Victor had said, “I am a weretiger; no human, no matter how strong, can match me.”

Olaf didn’t like it, but he put a hand on my arm, above the elbow, and Victor climbed onto the table to pin my lower body. He was strong. They were all strong, but thanks to Jean-Claude’s vampire marks, so was I.

Edward pressed down hard enough to hold my shoulders still, but I couldn’t help but move as the needle began to move through my skin again.

“Scream,” he said.

“What?”

“Scream, Anita, you have to let it out one way or another. If you scream, maybe you won’t keep moving.”

“If I start screaming, I won’t stop.”

“We won’t tell,” Bernardo said from the arm he was pressing, sort of desperately, into the table.

The needle bit into my skin, and tugged. I opened my mouth and screamed. I put all the fear, all the fight-or-flight into that sound. I screamed as fast as I could draw breath. I screamed loud, long, and let myself sink into it. I screamed and wept and cursed, but I stopped moving so much.

When the doctor was finished, I was shaking and sweat covered, and nauseous, unable to focus my eyes, and my throat hurt, but we were done.

The doctor switched out the empty bag of clear fluid with a fresh one. “She’s in shock again. I don’t like that.”

Someone brought a blanket and covered me with it. I managed to say, in a voice that sounded so rough it wasn’t mine, “We need to go. Bibi will be here, and Paula Chu needs looking at.”

“You aren’t going anywhere until you have another bag of fluids in you,” the doctor said.

Edward was back at my head, smoothing down the edge of my hair, where the curls had stuck to the side of my face. “He’s right. You can’t go out like this.”

“We will go and make sure Paula Chu does not get away,” Olaf said.

“Yeah,” Bernardo said, “we can do that.”

They left, and another blanket went over me because my teeth had started to chatter. Edward touched my face again. “Rest, I’ll be here.”

I didn’t mean to sleep, but once I stopped shaking, it just seemed so hard to keep my eyes open. Bibiana was coming, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I slept and let my body start to heal. The last thing I saw was Edward pulling up a chair so he’d be beside me and able to see all the doors at the same time. It made me smile, and then I was gone to the warmth of the blankets and the tiredness of my body.