Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 69

I WOKE UP in the dimness of a bed, sandwiched between warm bodies. I thought I was home, between Nathaniel and Micah. I sighed, content, and cuddled tighter in against Micah, pulling Nathaniel tighter against my front. It was how we usually slept, but the man behind me was too tall for Micah and just felt wrong. The man in my arms was too short, and didn't have the muscles or shape of Nathaniel.

My eyes suddenly opened wide, my body tensed. I couldn't see who was behind me, but the man in front had short, dark hair. He had his face buried into the pillow so I couldn't see his face. I held my breath and started moving my arm slowly away from his waist. I'd still have to move the arm at my waist from the other man, but one problem at a time.

"He won't wake," a voice said.

I jumped, and looked around the room. I saw a third man on the far side of the bed, one arm dangling. That one I knew was Crispin, nude sleeping on his stomach above the covers.

"You'll have to rise up to see me," Victor said again.

I started easing up, holding the second man's arm by the wrist so I wouldn't disturb him.

"Honestly, Anita, they won't wake. Everyone on the bed will have to sleep off the change. That won't happen for hours."

I could see him now, in the big chair in the corner. He'd put on one of the bathrobes that came with the room. His short white hair was tousled, as if he'd been running his fingers through it, or maybe it was bedhead.

Then I had an image, not of sight, but touch. I remembered running my hands through his hair, and forcing him to look in my eyes as we...

"Oh, shit," I said.

He nodded. "That would about cover it."

I was sitting up now, my back to the leather headboard. I could see the man on the other side now. He had long, dark hair that spilled over his face and went past his shoulders. He was muscled, and tall, and I didn't know him.

"Who are they?"

"You should recognize one of them."

I kept my voice low, as if they were just asleep. "I don't know the one at my back."

"You've probably seen him on the billboard outside the Taj. He's our guest star for the next month, and then he is to go home. Your Requiem is taking his place for a month."

I pictured the flashing image of the smiling redhead with the words, "Come watch the beefcake turn into kitty-cats," and the sign morphed from human to a red tiger.

"Oh, no," I said.

There was a noise from nearer the door. I couldn't see anything, but I remembered in North Carolina that there'd been one tiger on the floor. A man sat up, with a groan. He had straight black hair that fell around his shoulders, and a face that had uptilted eyes, like Bibiana's, but his skin wasn't pale. He was tanned and looked like the outdoors was his thing. He laid his face in his hands and groaned again. "What happened?" he asked.

"What do you remember?" Victor asked him.

He looked around the room until he saw me sitting in the bed. "Her."

Victor nodded. "Yes, her."

"I didn't do this on purpose," I said. I was remembering a dream. A dream with Vittorio in it and the Mother of All Darkness. The dream was coming back quicker than whatever had happened in this room.

"The Father of Tigers did it," the man on the floor said.

I stared at him as Victor said, "Who?"

"Vittorio," I said, "it's one of his old names. How do you know that title of his?"

"I was his tiger to call."

"Was?" I asked.

Victor just suddenly had a gun in his hand, pointed at the man. It was one of my guns.

"He called me from halfway across the world. I had to answer him. He was my master before, and when he regained enough power, I could not resist him." He seemed to be staring at nothing, but the look on his face said that whatever he was remembering wasn't anything good. "I thought I was free of him forever, but there's no escape, not if he wants you."

"He came into the hotel," Victor said. "He touched me, and I had to come here. I didn't even hear him come up to me. I heard nothing until he touched me, and then I just did what he wanted. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't ask for help. I couldn't say no to him."

"No, it's like you're his slave, or puppet. He can make you do such horrible things, and you can't stop."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"To him, I'm Hong, but to myself and for centuries, I've been Sebastian."

"All right, Sebastian, you said was, as in past tense, you were his animal to call. What changed?"

"You changed." He stood up, and he was as unself-consciously nude as all the wereanimals. I had a sudden memory of him above me, his body spasming, head back, lost to orgasm, and the sensation of him inside me. It made me have to take a deep breath and blow it out, slow. He was short, about my size. I looked at his hands; they were small, almost as small as mine.

"He may have fed on the energy of what we did in this room, but the moment we had sex, the moment I felt you feed on me, it was like you broke something in me. You broke his hold on me."

"That's not possible," I said.

"The Dark Mother did it centuries ago. It was one of her specialties to be able to break bonds between masters and servants. She would strip other masters of their power, and keep that power for her own."

"Victor, toss me a gun," I said.

He looked at me.

"Just do it."

He checked for the safety, which I liked, then tossed me my Smith amp; Wesson. I caught it, clicked off the safety, and pointed it at Sebastian. "Did you kill the SWAT practitioner?"

He just nodded. "I might hate the master, but I gained powers, as of old. I could control the two jinn he had found, and the police wizard knew a very old spell. It would have lost me the control over them. The jinn hate to be slaves, and if they get the chance they will turn on their masters."

"Like a demon," I said.

"Yes, sometimes."

I had my knees up, resting the gun on them, still pointed at him. "I know you murdered a cop. I should turn you in, but I also know you had no choice. He can make you do things. Things you don't want to do."

"He smells of the truth, Anita," Victor said.

"I agree."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know yet. Tell us about the jinn."

He stood there, his hands at his sides, trying to be very still as we pointed guns at him.

"Tell us about the jinn."

"Do you mean genies?" Victor said.

"If what I saw at Vittorio's back was a genie, then the movies and story-books have it all wrong."

"I take it they don't grant wishes," Victor said.

Sebastian and I both laughed, but not like we were happy. We looked at each other, and I realized that his eyes were the same color as Domino's, like fire carved into eyes. I asked, "Where's Domino?"

"At the foot of the bed," Victor said.

I nodded. "Okay, now tell us about the creatures."

"They can be attached to or trapped in an object, and then they can be forced to do the bidding of a sorcerer or magician. That much of the stories is true," Sebastian said.

"Like his ring," I said.

"Exactly."

"If he lost the ring, would he lose control of the jinn?"

"Yes, until he is restored to full power. Once at his full strength, he can call them out of the air without magical aid. It is his gift."

"There was wind, and then they appeared," I said.

"They are a second kind of people, Anita, created from air, as we were created from earth. They are very powerful spirits, so powerful that King Solomon destroyed them as a people and made them slaves to his bidding, and they were reduced to servants, or only spirits, whose greatest abilities lie in whispering evil in our ears to manipulate us."

"King Solomon had a seal made that he used to imprison most of their race, or something, right?" I said.

He nodded. "Yes. Some stories say that he used them to build his great temples."

"If we can get the ring from him, then will the jinn turn and kill him?"

"They might, or they may simply flee. He is to their race what the bogeyman is to yours."

I noticed he said yours, like it wasn't his. I skipped that and tried to decide what to do with him. He had killed a member of SWAT and helped kill others. But I believed that Vittorio had made him do it, just like the vampires at the club last night and the humans in the crowd.

"We have to kill him before he regains all his powers," I said.

"Agreed," Sebastian said.

"How?" Victor asked.

"I know his daytime resting place," Sebastian said.

I lowered the gun, and Victor followed my lead. "Turn on some lights, find some clothes, and tell me the address. Tell me all the addresses of anywhere he's stayed in Vegas since you got back with him."

"Happily, does this mean I'm not going to be executed?"

"Yeah, I think it does."

"You won't tell them about me?"

"I'll try not to."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, help me kill him before he becomes the Father of the Day again."

"Yes," Sebastian said. "If he regains his full powers, he will be able to conjure armies of the jinn from the very air we breathe."

Victor said, "I have pen and paper."

"Tell him the addresses." I started to crawl out over the other man in the bed, but crawling let me see his face better. "Oh, Mother of God, no," I said.

I fell off the foot of the bed, landing on Domino, who gave a grunt and woke up. "Anita, are you all right."

"You broke her fall," Sebastian said.

I got to my feet and was staring down at the bed. Crispin was still there, and the red tiger/stripper, whose name I didn't even know, but the third man wasn't a man at all. He was a boy. It was the blue tiger, Cynric, who was all of sixteen.