Skin Trade

52

SHAW CAME DOWN the hallway, so angry it bordered on rage, and that little voice in my head said, Food. I could siphon off his anger and feed. Anger wasn’t as complete a feed as lust and romance for the ardeur. It was having a snack but not a meal. It had been nearly twelve hours since I’d last fed the ardeur. It took energy to heal wounds, and though I’d slept in the shadow of Victor’s energy, I hadn’t fed off him. Shit, shit, shit, I needed to be away from the other cops, and soon.

“You did something to Morgan. I don’t know what, or how, but you did something.”

I moved a little behind Edward so there’d be no chance of Shaw getting too close to me. I didn’t trust myself around all that rage.

“You can’t hide behind Forrester forever, Blake.”

“Think of it as more for your protection than mine,” I said, smiling sweetly. Which was the wrong thing to say, and the wrong thing to do. Why had I done either? What was wrong with me?

His face began to mottle with his anger. His big hands folded into fists. “Are you threatening me?”

“No,” I said, and tried to make that one word inoffensive.

His cell phone went off, and he stepped away, sort of sideways to us, as if he didn’t want to give us his back, to bark into the phone, “Shaw, what?” He was quiet for a few minutes listening, then nodded and said, “We’ll be there.”

He walked back to us, the anger level lower, and his face edged with lines that hadn’t been there a moment before. I was almost a hundred percent sure what the news would be.

“We have another dead stripper. It looks like it’s this Vittorio again.”

I didn’t chastise him for not giving us the files on the earlier stripper deaths. The tiredness in his face showed just how much this case was taking out of him. “We’ll follow you,” Edward said.

“Fine.” He turned and went back the way we’d come. We trailed behind him.

Edward dropped back and whispered, “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He lowered his voice even more, “You fed on him somehow.”

“His anger,” I said.

“I’ve never seen you do that.”

“It’s new.”

“What else is new?” he asked, and the look in his eyes wasn’t one I liked seeing from Edward. He was my friend, my good friend, but there was still part of him that wondered which of us was better. I knew who was better-him-but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that. There was a part of him that was no longer certain he’d win, and a bigger part of him wanted the question answered. Now he looked at me, not like a friend but like he was wondering how much more powerful I’d grown, and what that might mean if we ever hunted each other.

“Don’t go there,… Ted,” I said.

He gave me eyes as cold as a winter sky. “You need to tell me about the new stuff.”

“No,” I said, “not with that look on your face, I don’t.”

He smiled then, and it was a smile to match the eyes. It wasn’t that different from the way a shapeshifter looked at you when they were wondering what you’d taste like, except Edward’s smile wasn’t as warm.

We were out in the neon-lit dark, but it was still too dark for the glasses… had my eyes turned back? I waited until we’d followed Olaf and Bernardo to the SUV. When we were all in our seats, I lowered the glasses enough so I could flash them at Edward. “How do I look?”

“Normal,” he said, and his voice was crawling back out of that Edward cold, to something that wouldn’t frighten small children if they heard it.

I handed the glasses back to him.

He shook his head. “Keep them, just in case.”

“What happened to mine?”

“Smashed.” He started the engine and followed the line of police cars that were trailing out, lights and sirens filling the night, as if we were trying to wake everyone up.

“How did my glasses get smashed, and what happened to the windbreaker you loaned me?”

“Bibiana and her tigers wanted to put another weretiger in the bed with you and Victor. I didn’t agree.”

Bernardo leaned forward over the backseat, holding on to the seat as Edward took a corner a little fast. “What happened in the hallway, Anita?”

“She did something to the detective,” Olaf said.

I glanced back at the big man, almost lost in the shadows of the car. “How do you know what I did?”

“I don’t know what you did to him, but I know you did something. I saw your eyes change.”

“You didn’t say anything,” Bernardo said.

“I didn’t think we wanted the other policeman to know.”

“Sorry that I blurted that out,” Bernardo said, giving Olaf a look, then back to me. “But what did you do to Morgan?”

I glanced at Edward.

“Tell them, if you want to.”

“You saw what I did.”

“You made him agree with you,” Olaf said.

“Yeah.”

“How did you do it?” Bernardo asked.

“If I said I don’t know, would you believe me?”

Bernardo said no, and Olaf said yes.

Bernardo frowned at him again. “Why do you believe that?”

“The look on her face when she realized what she had done. It frightened her.”

Bernardo seemed to think about it, then frowned again. “She didn’t look scared; nervous, maybe.”

“It was fear.”

“And you’re sure of that?” Bernardo asked.

“Yes,” Olaf said.

“Because you know Anita so well.”

“No, because I know the look of fear on someone’s face, Bernardo, man or woman. I know fear when I see it.”

“Fine.” Bernardo turned back to me. “Are you a vampire?”

“No.” Then I thought about it. “Not in the traditional sense.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t feed on blood. I’m not dead. Holy objects and sunshine don’t bother me. I go to church most Sundays and nothing bursts into flame.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice on that last part.

“But you can cloud men’s minds and make them do what you want, like a vamp.”

“This was the first time for that.”

The cars had stopped ahead, smearing the bubble lights into the mix of neon from the buildings. We were just off the main Strip, so that the brighter lights of it peeked over the buildings around us like some artifical dawn pressing against the night.

“We’re here,” Edward said.

“Which is your way of saying, Stop asking questions,” Bernardo said.

“It is,” Edward said.

“I think we have a right to ask questions when we’re helping her cover up whatever she’s doing.”

I couldn’t really argue that.

“You’ve both volunteered to feed her with sex,” Edward said. “You might want to understand what you’re volunteering for before you open your mouth.” With that, Edward opened his door and got out. I didn’t wait for an invitation. I got out, too, and left our backseat drivers to scramble out and follow us. Okay, Bernardo scrambled. Olaf just seemed to pour himself out of the car and be walking behind us. Funny that Bernardo was all spooked, but Olaf seemed fine with it. Of course, if he wanted me to overlook the whole serial killer thing, he’d have to be a little more understanding with me. Living vampire, serial killer; po-tay-to, po-tah-to.