Skin Trade

62

I WAS ALMOST to the edge of the crowd when a man in a gray hooded sweatshirt turned and blocked my way. I opened my mouth to say, Excuse me, sir, but I got a glimpse of the face in the hood and the words froze on my lips.

I had a glimpse of dark brown eyes, black hair, skin darkly pale, a handsome, masculine face, until he turned into the light and the burn scars on his right side showed.

My hand reached for the Browning, but it wasn’t there, nothing was there. I was unarmed, and he was standing in front of me.

“Do not contact your vampires via mind; I will sense it, and I will tell my vampires to kill the temptresses inside the club. And, yes, I knew you were unarmed. I did not think you would ever be that careless, but it gives us a chance to talk.”

I licked suddenly dry lips and did the only thing I could think of: stepped back, gave myself room, for all the good it was going to do me.

“Why take the club? Why give the police time to trap your vampires?” I asked, voice still calm. Point for me.

“It was bait, for you, Anita.”

“Gee, and most men just send flowers,” I said.

He looked at me with solid brown eyes. I couldn’t read his expression completely, but I think my reaction wasn’t what he expected, or maybe not what he wanted. “If you call for help in any way, I will have the vampires that I control start killing the harlots.”

“They’re dancers, not prostitutes,” I said, “but I get it, you’re master enough to contact your people mind to mind,” I said.

He nodded. “As are you,” he said.

I took a deep breath and fought to get some control over my pulse and heart rate. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I let it go. I rarely got in trouble keeping my mouth shut.

He was staring me up and down, not the way a man will a woman, but like he was looking over a car he planned to buy. It was definitely more purchase than date, that look.

I tried to get him talking, “Fine, you want to talk to me, let’s talk.”

“Come with me, now.” He actually held one large, long-fingered hand out to me. It was a big hand, bigger than I liked, but graceful, like his voice.

“No,” I said.

“I will have them kill the whores we have taken unless you come with me.”

I shook my head. “You’ll probably kill them anyway.”

“If I give my word?”

“I know you mean that, but you’re also a serial killer and a sexual sadist; sorry, but that makes me not trust you.” I shrugged and started thinking furiously in Edward’s direction, not magic, just that wish in my head that he would look this way, come this way, notice. But I was too short and the crowd blocked the view. I realized that the vampire in front of me was blocking the view even more. I doubted it was an accident.

“I see your point,” he said. He moved the hood more from his right side. “Take a good look, Anita. See what the humans have done to me.”

I tried not to look, because I wasn’t sure if it was a distraction technique, but some things are hard to look away from. Asher’s facial scars were just on the side of one cheek, trailing down to the chin. The entire right cheek of Vittorio’s face, from where the hood hit it to the edge of his mouth and the tip of his chin, was all hardened scar tissue.

He let the hood drop back to hide his face, and I realized he had his left hand held out to his side, for all the world as if he expected someone to come take his hand. A young girl reached for him. I thought for a moment she was another vampire, but one look into those wide, gray eyes and I knew better. She was dressed in tramp chic, skirt too short, midriff showing, small breasts as mounded as she could get them. Before it became the style I’d have said hooker, but so many of the teenage girls were wearing this kind of shit, it made me wonder what the real hookers were wearing.

He smoothed her straight brown hair back from her face. She smiled dreamily up at him.

“Leave her alone,” I said.

He caressed her cheek, and she cuddled into it like a kitten. He turned her face to me, so I could see how young the face under the makeup was: fourteen, maybe fifteen, no more. It was hard to tell in that much makeup and the clothes. It tended to make you add years that the girls hadn’t earned.

“I said, leave her alone.” My voice wasn’t shaky anymore; it held the first edge of anger. I embraced that, fed the anger with sweet thoughts of vengeance and what I’d do to him when I had the chance.

“If your beast rises, I will tear her throat out.” He drew her in against his body as he said it.

I had to master my anger then, swallow it down, because he was right; I couldn’t guarantee with this much stress that anger wouldn’t tip me into some kind of lycanthrope problem. If I could have shifted for real, it would have given me weapons, but it wasn’t a weapon for me, it was just one more problem.

He reached his other hand out, and a man came to it. He was tall, taller than the vampire. His gray eyes were almost a match for the girl’s; even his short hair was the same shade of brown. He gazed forward, seeing nothing.

Vittorio began to unzip his sweatshirt, exposing his chest. I knew what it would look like, because that was the worst of Asher’s scars. But again, it was worse. The holy water hadn’t just scarred the skin, it had eaten into the deeper tissue, exposing ligaments and the bones of his ribs. It looked like his body had tried to regrow some tissue over it, but the right side of his chest and stomach looked like a skeleton with a hard covering of scars. His stomach was a little concave, where there’d been no bone to support the healing.

If he had wanted to hurt me in that moment, he could have, because I was mesmerized with the damage and that he’d survived it.

“If I could have died of infection, I would have, for there were no antibiotics when they did this to me.”

“If you want to die, wait here, I’ll get a gun and help you out.”

“There was a time when that was what I sought, but no one was powerful enough to slay me. I took it as a message that I was death, because death could not touch me.”

“Everything dies, Vittorio,” I said, and I couldn’t keep my gaze from flicking between the daughter and the father.

“So fragile, humans, aren’t they?”

“Did you bring them with you to use as hostages?”

“I found them in the crowd. I thought at first”-he hugged the girl-“she was a whore, but she is only pretending.” He kissed the top of her head, and she snuggled against him. “She reeks of innocence and untried things.”

“What-do-you-want?” And I let each word hold the anger that I was really having trouble fighting off. I’d have given almost anything in that moment for a gun.

He stared down at the girl as she cuddled against him, her arms deep inside the sweatshirt, wrapping her arms completely around him. She gazed up at him like he was the best thing since sliced bread.

“She sees what I was before. I was beautiful once.”

“Then you do the big reveal, and that’s part of the thrill for you. I get it.”

He spoke looking at me, not her. “I can leave this place with this family or with you. Will you trade your freedom for theirs?”

“Don’t do this,” I said, voice softer.

“You will come with me to save them?”

I looked at the man, with his unseeing gaze, and the besotted girl. “You don’t kill children or men. Unless the men are strippers. These aren’t your victims of choice. Let them go.”

“Should I wake the father up enough to see and know what we do to his daughter?”

“What do you want, Vittorio?” I asked.

“You,” he said.

We stood staring at each other. He had a slight smile on his face; I didn’t. “Me, in what way?”

He laughed, and it was a bitter sound. “Oh, your virtue is safe, Anita; the Church took care of that long ago.”

“Is it about your vampires in St. Louis? Is that why you wanted me here?”

“Revenge is for the small-minded, Anita. You will learn that I think larger thoughts, grander ones.”

The girl began to kiss the ruined side of his chest. She began to make small eager sounds in her throat.

He’d done something else to her, mind to mind, and I hadn’t felt it. I was standing feet away from him, and I hadn’t felt a damn thing. I hadn’t met a vampire in years that could do that to me.

“I have spies in Maximillian’s camp. He knows, and I know now, that Jean-Claude has not given you the fourth mark.”

I fought to keep my face blank and knew I failed by a widening of the eyes, a catch of the breath, a speed of pulse.

“Your master has left the door open for others, Anita. Bibiana wants Max to walk through that door. She believes that if you loved Jean-Claude you would have allowed it and married him by now. She sees your indecision as proof that you haven’t found your true love.”

“She’s old-fashioned that way,” I said, because what else could I say? He’d know if I was lying. Vampires and wereanimals are like walking lie detectors if they’re powerful enough, and he was.

“But do not worry about Max and his bride, for I have decided it is my door to open, not his.”

I blinked up at him, the anger dying under the confusion. I’d thought of a lot of things this nut-bunny could have wanted from me; that hadn’t been one of them. “You want to make me your human servant?”

“I do.”

“Why?” I asked, “Everyone knows what a pain in Jean-Claude’s ass I am. Why do you want to deal with that?” I couldn’t call for help in any way, or someone else died. I couldn’t go all lycanthrope, because it wouldn’t help me. What could I do? What the fuck could I do without a gun?

He laughed again, but this time it was lower, more attractive, more seductive. “The power, Anita. You are the first necromancer in centuries, and with so many other powers.” He moved a little closer, drawing the girl with him. The man followed a step behind like some kind of robot.

Vittorio reached out with the hand not wrapped around the girl. I stepped back. All vampire powers increase by proximity, and especially touch. He’d done things that were almost impossible; I did not want to find out what his touch could do.

“Anita, you will make me the most powerful Master of the City in all of the new world.”

“So you take me, and then we take Vegas from Max?” I was thinking furiously, going over my options. There didn’t seem to be a lot of them. I only knew I wasn’t leaving the area with him. One rule with serial killers: make them kill you in public, because whatever they’ll do to you in private will be worse. I also couldn’t let him leave with the girl and her father. But he couldn’t fly with two people; he’d have to simply walk away. I could stop that, couldn’t I? Shit. Think, Anita, think.

“Tiger is my animal to call, Anita. We slay Max and his wife, and it is over.”

“Victor, you’d have to kill their son, too,” I said.

He smiled, and he moved toward me again. I moved out of reach again.

“Yes, of course. What a queen you will make for our empire of blood and pain.” His voice was cheerful, as if we weren’t talking about murder.

“Allow me but a touch, just to lay these fingers alongside your cheek.” He held the hand up, like a magician; nothing up my sleeve. Riiight.

“Don’t move.” It was Edward’s voice. It took almost everything I had not to turn and search for where he was, but I kept my eyes on the vampire in front of me. Help was here, if I didn’t fuck up.

The father moved up beside Vittorio, and I’d have bet everything I had that he was blocking Edward’s shot.

“The man’s bespelled, Edward,” I said, and again had to fight not to look for him, but Vittorio was too powerful to look away, for even a second. I wasn’t sure what his touch would do to me. Maybe nothing, or maybe something bad. I was faster than human-normal, thanks to Jean-Claude, so if I just kept looking at him, I could stay out of reach, or that was the plan.

“My friends, come to me,” he said, and this time I felt the smallest tug of power. The crowd at the barrier turned toward us and spilled out toward him.

“He’s bespelled the crowd!” I started to turn to run, but the girl was still in his arms. It made me hesitate. The crowd spilled around us. They shielded him from any gunfire, but they also tried to grab me. It was as if they were zombies, sightless eyes, reaching hands, no thought. How had he mind-rolled this many people? How the fuck had he done it?

I tried not to hurt them, at first, but when I realized they were trying to hold me down by sheer numbers, I stopped being nice. I kicked a knee and felt it give. A man screamed and then said, “What’s happening? Where am I?”

I hit the nearest face, seeing my target as the opposite side of that face, the way you’re taught in martial arts. He simply went down and vanished in the crowd. I brought down two more with joint hits and one bloody nose. The pain brought them out of it, and they crawled away, no longer a threat, but I’d waited too late, and there were just too many.

I yelled, “Pain, they snap out of it when they hurt!” I wasn’t sure anyone heard me, until I heard cries of pain from the outside of the mob. Someone was coming, someone on my side. But the hands held me down, the sheer weight of all the people, and I couldn’t move.

Vittorio knelt by my head. He laid his hand on my face. I tried to keep moving, but there was nothing I could do. His eyes filled with brown fire. I knew what he was going to do.

I screamed, “Edward!”

One moment I heard bodies hitting the ground, the next there was nothing but the touch of the vampire and his eyes, like brown glass flame, hovering in front of my face. They pressed against my face. I closed my eyes and screamed.