Cerulean Sins (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 11)

40

Jason leaned his head back against the passenger seat of the Jeep. His eyes were closed, and he looked weary. There were hollows under his eyes even with them closed. Jason was fair-skinned, not pale. He didn't tan dark, but nicely golden. Today he looked vampire pale, and his skin gave the illusion that it was too thin, as if some great hand had been rubbing around his eyes and across his face, rubbing him down like you'd worry a pebble in your hand.

"You look like shit," I said.

He smiled, without opening his eyes. "You sweet-talker."

"No, I mean it, you look terrible. Are you going to be okay about tonight, the banquet, and everything?"

He opened his eyes enough to slide his gaze towards me. "Do I have a choice? Do any of us really have a choice?"

Put that way . . . "No, I guess not." My voice suddenly sounded tired, too.

He smiled again, his head still back against the seat, eyes almost closed. "If the Lieutenant hadn't popped a major gasket, would I be on my way to a secured facility, right now?"

I buckled myself into the driver's seat and started the Jeep.

"You didn't answer me," he said, voice low but insistent.

I put the Jeep in gear. "Maybe, I don't know. If Dolph hadn't been popping a major gasket, as you put it, then he'd never have even thought of putting you in a facility." I eased out of the parking area. "But he might have called you in for questioning. You are pretty scratched up, and you are a werewolf." I shrugged.

He stretched his arms up over his head, arching his body against the seat, stretching all the way to his toes. It was an oddly graceful gesture. The movement flashed the cuts on his arms, making his T-shirt sleeves ride up, and he added a writhing movement, like a shudder, or a wave that flowed from the tip of his fingers, down his arms, his chest, the arch of his neck, his waist, the ripeness of his hips, down the muscles of his thighs, to his calves, to his toes.

A loud honking and the screech of brakes brought me back to the road, and the fact that I was driving. I managed not to hit anyone, but it was close. I threaded my way through a forest of rude gestures and Jason's laughter.

"I feel better now," he said, laughter still thick in his voice.

I glanced at him, frowning. His blue eyes were sparkling, his face suddenly glowing with glee. I struggled, but finally had to smile back. Jason had always been able to do that to me, make me smile when I didn't want to.

"What is so damned funny?" I said, but there was an edge of laughter in my voice that I couldn't quite swallow.

"I was trying to flirt, and it worked. You've never reacted to my body before, not even when I was naked."

I concentrated on the road, really hard, while the blush burned my face.

He chortled. "You're blushing for me. Oh, God, yes!"

"Keep it up and you are going to piss me off." I turned onto Clark, and headed for the Circus.

"You don't get it, do you?" He looked at me, and I couldn't read the look on his face. Puzzlement, delight, and something else.

"Get what?" I asked.

"I'm not invisible on your guy-radar anymore."

"What?"

"You notice men, Anita, but you'd never noticed me. I was beginning to feel like the court eunuch."

I gave him a quick frown before turning back to the road. I did not want to risk another near miss. I'd had my adrenaline rush for the day.

"Come on, you know what I mean."

I sighed. "Maybe."

"Maybe it's because you don't do casual sex, but it means more to you than just fucking, even with the ardeuron."

If I'd been standing I would have shuffled my feet. I had to settle for concentrating really hard on my driving. "If you've got a point to make, Jason, make it."

"Don't get all grumpy, Anita. My point is that even if we never touch each other again, I'm on your radar screen now. You see me. You really see me." He looked deeply content.

I was confused. When I'm confused I usually try and concentrate on work. "Do you think the lycanthrope that's raping and killing these women is local?"

"I know he's not," Jason said.

I looked at him, because he sounded so positive. "How can you be that sure?"

"It was a werewolf, it wasn't one of our pack. There are no werewolves in the St. Louis area that are not part of the Thronnos Rokke Clan."

"How do you know it was a werewolf? It could have been any of a dozen types of half-men predators."

"It smelled like wolf." He frowned at me. "Didn't you smell it in the house?"

"Mostly all I smelled was blood, Jason."

"Sometimes I forget you're not one of us, yet."

"Is that a compliment or a complaint?"

He grinned. "Neither."

"How can you be so sure it wasn't one of our werewolves?"

"It didn't smell like pack."

"Forget that I am human, and my nose isn't four hundred times more sensitive and scent discriminating, and explain it to me simply."

"My nose in human form isn't as good as my nose in wolf form. The world is so alive. Scenting is almost like sight. If you've never experienced it, it's hard to explain, but in human form touch is probably secondary to sight. In wolf form scent is secondary to sight, or in some cases, ahead of it."

"Okay, say that's so, what does that mean for this investigation?"

"It means that I know the killer is a werewolf, and I know he's not one of ours."

"Your opinion won't fly in court," I said.

"I didn't think it would. Honest, I would have mentioned what I'd smelled in the house sooner if I hadn't assumed you smelled it, too." He looked worried now, and suddenly younger because of it, all schoolboy charm.

What he'd said got me thinking.

"Most breeds of scent hounds won't track a werewolf, or any wereanimal for that matter. They go all shit-face, howling and whining and freaking out. They basically tell the hunters, you're on your own," I said.

"I knew dogs didn't like us, but I didn't know they didn't like us that much."

"Depends on the breed of dog, but most dogs don't want to mess with you guys. I can't say I blame them."

"So I guess going down to the pound and picking out a dog is out then."

"You'd set the place on its ear."

"Okay, did you have a point?" he asked, and grinned again.

"Yes, could a werewolf in wolf form track this killer?"

Jason thought about that, face all serious again. "Probably, but I don't think the police will go for it. They don't like us much, either."

"Probably they won't, but I'll float it by Zerbrowski when he calls."

"You're sure he's going to call?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because we've got two dead women, and it's probably all over the media."

"If you watched television, read a newspaper occasionally, or even listened to the radio, you might know these things," Jason said.

"Probably true, but there's heat to solve this case, and more innocent lives at risk. Zerbrowski will call, because they're grasping at straws or they wouldn't have brought you in. If Dolph had a more promising lead, even out of his head like he is, he wouldn't have been busting your chops, or mine."

"You're sure of that?"

"He's a cop, above all else. If he had anything else to chase, he'd have been out chasing it, not wasting time with you."

"I don't know, Anita, I didn't see much of the cop left today. He seems like a man who's let his personal problems eat everything else."

I would have argued if I could have, but I couldn't. "I'll mention the idea to Zerbrowski, if they get desperate enough they may go for it."

"How desperate would they have to be?"

I turned the Jeep into the parking lot of the Circus. "Maybe two more bodies, maybe three. Using a werewolf to track a werewolf might appeal to Zerbrowski's sense of humor, but getting the upper brass to agree would be the problem."

"Two more women, maybe three, Jesus, Anita, why not try the desperate measures before things get so damned bad?"

"The police are like most people, Jason, they don't like thinking outside the box. Using a werewolf in animal form as a sort of preternatural scent hound is way outside the freaking box."

"Maybe," he said, "but I smelled what was upstairs, Anita. So much blood, so much meat. A human being shouldn't be reduced to meat and blood."

"Aren't we all just food on the hoof?" I tried to make a joke of it, but Jason looked offended.

"You of all people should know better than that."

"Maybe," I said, feeling my own smile slide away from my face. "Okay, I'm sorry, no offense meant, but I've had too many shape-shifters threaten me to have any illusions about where I am on the food chain. And there are an awful lot of shapeshifters that still believe they are at the top."

"I don't buy that radical crap about us being the top of the evolutionary ladder," Jason said, "if we were really the perfection of evolution, why have we been around for thousands of years, but yet, you poor humans outnumber us, and usually outkill us?"

I parked near the back door and turned off the engine. Jason opened his door, but said, over his shoulder as he was getting out, "Don't fool yourself, Anita, plain old humans kill more of us than we ever will of them." He smiled, but not like it was funny, "They even kill more of each other than we kill of them." Then he was striding across the parking lot. He never looked back.

I had offended Jason. Until that moment I hadn't been sure it was possible to offend him. Either he was growing up, or I was getting less diplomatic. Since I couldn't possibly get less diplomatic than usual, Jason must have been growing up. For the first time in a while, I wondered if he would always be content to be Jean-Claude's lap wolf and appetizer. And stripper, too. But you can't strip and feed the vampires forever, can you?