Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 40

SANCHEZ HAD TRIED to peek behind my partially raised shields, and he was too powerful, or it was like when we shook hands and he alone of all of the practitioners spiked me. I had a pure human mind-fuck me for the second time in one day. It was a record.

I felt his power, but it was like looking at calm water; you don't always see the rocks just below that will tear the bottom out of your boat and sink you.

One minute we were calm; the next he'd ripped my shields open like a wound. His power poured into that wound, but other things had been waiting, and they followed on the tail of his energy like a mugger coming in behind your key.

I felt vampire first, powerful, but just vampire. It breathed in on Sanchez's coattails. I didn't fight it, because I hoped it was Vittorio. I drew the taste of his power into me like wine that you hold in your mouth, warming it until the bouquet of it fills your mouth, your nose, your senses. If this was him, I wanted the scent of him to stay with me, because there was a chance that I might be able to track him through his own power, if he would just give me a little more of it.

Sanchez said, "What is that?"

"Bad guy," I whispered.

I felt him try to push at the power, too. "Don't help me," I said.

"I'm pretty good."

"Don't...," but I didn't have time to finish the sentence because something else found us. Marmee Noir was the Queen of All Vampires. But that didn't quite prepare you for the wave of living darkness that poured over us both. It drowned out the subtle energy of Vittorio's daytime power, if it had even been him. She drowned everything else.

I was left kneeling on cold stone, in a cavern lit by torches. Sanchez knelt with me, his hand still in mine. He looked up. "What is this?" I knew our bodies were still in the house in Vegas, but our minds, not so much.

Something moved in the shadows between the torches. She was cloaked in blackness, and I couldn't tell if it was a black cloak or if she had formed herself from the darkness and it only looked like clothes. Her delicate foot stepped into the light, and tiny seed pearls caught the light, with bits of shiny black jet embroidered between them. I'd seen those shoes once before when she almost manifested physically in St. Louis.

Her body should have been upstairs in a room where she'd been hidden away for over a thousand years, but there she stood. Was it a dream? Was she really awake?

She answered my thought. "My body sleeps, but I am no longer trapped by flesh."

"What is she?" Sanchez asked.

"Shall we show him, necromancer?"

"No," I said.

"Let us see if his mind survives."

"NO!" I screamed it, and tried to bring us back out, but she flung her arms wide, and the cloak was darkness, because it stretched out and out, up and up, until we knelt staring into the perfect blackness of a starless night. The scent of jasmine choked me. I couldn't taste anything else.

Sanchez clung to my hand. "Anita, Anita, are you all right?"

I couldn't talk, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. I clung to him because he was all I had to cling to, but she was pouring herself down my throat. Once I'd thought she meant to kill me that way, but now I saw her thoughts too clearly. She didn't want to kill me, she wanted to possess me. Her body upstairs had lain too long unused, and she could not mend it. She wanted a new one. She wanted me.

There was a light in the dark, suddenly, like a bright hot star. The light came like the rising of the sun, and she screamed as she fell back. I came to myself in the living room in Sanchez's and Edward's arms. The room was full of crosses, glowing bright like stars. Everyone's cross was glowing as I fought to breathe. Edward turned me over so I could cough out onto the carpet. I spat out something clear and too thick for water. It smelled like flowers.

Edward held me until I was done and too weak to move.

"Was that our killer?" Hooper asked at last. "Was that our vampire?"

"It was a vampire," Sanchez said, "but I don't think it's here in Vegas."

I shook my head. My voice came out hoarse. "It's nothing to do with Vegas."

Sanchez said, "The Darkness wants to eat you."

"Yeah, she does. I have my shields for a reason, Sanchez. Don't fuck with them again."

"I'm sorry," he said. "What the fuck is she?"

I shook my head. "Nightmares."

"Fuck," he said.

"Sanchez, talk to me," Hooper said.

"Marshal Blake is powerful enough, Sarge. She's powerful enough, if you see through her shields, she's powerful enough to make the tigers call her Annie Fucking Oakley, if they have a title for it."

"What did you see, Sanchez?" Hooper said.

He looked at me, and we had a moment of understanding. He said, "Nightmares, Sarge. She fights nightmares, and they fight back."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Sanchez shook his head and clung to his sergeant's arm as he helped him stand. "It means I want to feel the sun on my face, and I never, ever want to make Blake drop her shields again. I really didn't mean to do that, by the way, Marshal. I'm sorry."

I tried to sit up and found that I could, though Edward's hand was a good thing to steady against. "I would say it's okay, but it's not. You almost got me hurt, Sanchez, bad hurt."

"I know"-Sanchez gave a little laugh that sounded wrong-"I saw what wanted to hurt you, Blake. I wish I hadn't seen it. How the fuck do you sleep at night?"

Edward helped me stand, and I almost fell. It was Olaf who took my other arm, but I wasn't steady enough to pull away. In that moment, help was okay. "I sleep fine," I said.

"Then you are an iron-willed motherfucking bastard." He started toward the door, so shaky that Hooper called another officer over to help him to the door.

When he was outside, Hooper turned to me. "Sanchez is solid. What the fuck did he see to shake him that bad?"

"You don't want to know," I said.

"Our holy items lit up like the freaking Fourth of July; what kind of vampire can cause that from a distance?"

"Pray that you never find out, Sergeant." I took a deep breath and let go of both men. When Edward let go, so did Olaf.

Hooper looked from me to Edward. "Do you know what it is, Forrester?"

Edward just said, "Yes."

"What is it?"

"The ultimate vampire," he said.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"She's the queen of them," I said, "and she's more powerful than anything I've ever felt. She's still in Europe somewhere. Pray that she never comes to America."

"She did all that from Europe?" Hooper sounded skeptical.

I glared at him. "Yeah, she did. Your man stripped my shields, like taking away your vest just before shooting a gun at your chest. You saw what happened to me."

"I didn't mean for Sanchez to fuck you up today, Blake."

"Sure," I said.

He frowned at me. "I fucking hate the psychic shit, but I didn't mean for you to get hurt." With that, he walked toward the door.

Edward leaned over me. "Are you all right?"

I shook my head, then said, "Sure."

"Liar," Bernardo said. But I noticed he'd been standing farther away than either Edward or Olaf. There were a lot of reasons that I didn't count on him.

"Fuck you," I said.

He grinned. "Hopefully."

I rolled my eyes at him, but it helped put things in perspective. The Mother of All Darkness was apparently just waiting outside my shields for a chance to eat me. I was so scared my skin was cold. I'd go out into the desert heat. I'd warm up. It would be all right. I tried to believe that, but I stared down at what I'd spit up on the carpet.

I asked, "What is that shit?"

Edward said the one thing I hate to hear him say. "I don't know." When Edward doesn't know the answers, we are so fucked.