Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 31

WE STEPPED FROM the waiting room into a box. Okay, maybe it was a room, but it was smaller than the elevator we'd come up in, and the walls were solid and gray. I knew metal when I saw it, and something about it felt wrong. As the doors were sliding closed, I said, "I think you'll lose the signal for a few minutes."

"Why?"

"I think it's a quiet room." Then the doors closed, and there was static in my ear. I tried anyway. "Edward, Edward, say something if you can hear me."

"He can't," Bernardo said, and he sounded disgusted. He looked at Rick. "That's why you didn't protest the radios; you knew they wouldn't do us a damn bit of good."

Rick shrugged, smiling like he was enjoying our discomfort. "The radios will work once we get into the room beyond. Promise." He even made the Boy Scout salute.

"Were you really a Boy Scout?" I asked.

His eyes widened a little, and then he nodded. "Max wanted us to have the all-American experience, so he started a troop just for us, so we wouldn't scare the humans."

I tried to picture an entire troop of little weretigers, and was both amused and impressed. "Is the troop still active?" I asked.

"You're looking at the current scout leader."

Bernardo said, "Muscle by night, scout leader by day; who are you, Clark Kent?"

Rick just grinned, and said, "Now what else is different about this room?"

"It's a test, isn't it?" I said.

"What kind of test?" Bernardo asked.

"The walls are reinforced metal of some kind. I'm betting they'll stand up to wereanimal and vampire strength, so no one can batter their way through."

He nodded and looked pleased. "Very good."

Bernardo took the next part. "That's why you wouldn't let us have the heavy artillery, because that might get through the far door."

"Another point for you."

"Are we going to be graded on this pop quiz?" I asked.

He nodded, and the smile faded. "Oh, yes, you'll get a grade."

"But you aren't the teacher, are you?"

He was solemn now. "No."

"Have we passed?" Bernardo asked.

"I'd hate for our backup to get too jumpy with the radio silence," I said.

"Good point," Rick said. "What else do you sense in here, Marshal Blake?"

"It's a metal box. It's proof against electronics. It's strong enough to stop most preternaturals, or at least slow them down."

"What else?" he asked.

I glared at him. "What do you want from me?"

"I want the energy that made us all wait for you to get off the elevator first."

"You want me to use the tigers to sense something."

"Yes, please."

"That's why you didn't want me to have Crispin with me, because as a vampire I could use the abilities of my animal to call, and you wouldn't be able to tell how much was me and how much was Crispin."

"Exactly," he said.

I sighed. I couldn't say out loud that I didn't want to call tiger energy when we were about to step through into a room full of them, but there were other things inside me. I reached down into that dark, quiet place and called wolf.

She came padding up through that dark, tree-filled place that was what my mind had made of where the beasts waited. It wasn't really where they waited inside me, but my human mind needed something concrete for them to stand on, and this was it. The she-wolf was white and cream, with black markings. She was huge and beautiful, and seeing her always made me remember where huskies and malamutes and a dozen other breeds had come from. You could see it in her, but once you looked past the beauty of the fur and saw her eyes, the illusion of dog was gone. Those eyes were wild and had nothing in them that would curl up by your fire at night.

"You smell like wolf," Rick said, and he grimaced, either trying to get a better scent or not enjoying what he was smelling. On a tiger face, it was tasting the scent; on a human face, it was disgust. He looked human, but I had no way of knowing how much like a tiger he thought in this form.

I started to walk close to the walls, but I didn't have to scent them. With the wolf so close to the surface, it had peeled down some of the shields I kept up automatically. Some of my metaphysical shields had become like a bulletproof vest for most cops. You put it on every day before you went out the door. You put it on so automatically that you forgot sometimes that you needed to take it off to do certain things. I could now shield so tight that magic I should have sensed easily didn't get through. I was shielding too tight if I had stepped into this space and not felt this. Which proved just how nervous I truly was about being surrounded by this many weretigers, with no other physical animal to back me up.

The magic in the walls crawled over my skin. I broke out in goose bumps from it. "What the fuck is in the walls?" I asked.

"Can't you tell?"

I shook my head and guessed. "Magic to keep magic out."

"Very good."

"Seriously," Bernardo said, "if we keep radio silence much longer you're going to find out how well that door stands up to heavy artillery."

"Are you making a threat?" Rick asked, and was very serious again.

"Not me," Bernardo said, spreading his hands wide, "but I know my friends outside. They aren't patient men."

Rick looked at me.

I shrugged, and nodded. "Ted will want to know what's happening to us."

"You, he wants to know what's happening to you," Bernardo said.

"You're part of his team, too."

"Yeah, but I'm not his 'woman,' " and he made little quotation marks around the word with his fingers. Was Bernardo starting to believe the lie that we were feeding Olaf?

I didn't know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. When in doubt, shut the fuck up.

Rick was looking from one of us to the other. It was way too thoughtful an expression for muscle. But then, I hadn't believed that Rick was just muscle. If he had been, I didn't think his queen would have wanted him on the feeding list.

"Have we passed your tests?" I asked.

"One last question," he said.

"Shoot."

"Why do you smell like wolf?"

I realized that the she-wolf was still just below the surface. I had called her energy, but had not had to put her back in her box. She seemed content to be ready to manifest more, but not to make a nuisance of herself. I had a spurt of pure happiness. I'd been working really hard with the beasts inside me, to be able to work with them and not fight them.

The wolf looked at me, as if she were standing in front of me. I had a moment of staring into her dark amber eyes, then I wanted her gone, and she just vanished. I didn't have to watch her walk down the path inside my head. She just went. For a second, I thought she was truly gone, but a moment's thought found her pale and distant in that not-so-real forest. She was still there, but I could bring her out and send her back with that little fuss.

I fought to control my emotions and not be as happy as I felt, or not show it. Bernardo was too observant, and wereanimals were way too observant.

"You don't smell like wolf anymore," Rick said. "How can you smell of tiger one moment and wolf the next?"

"Your Master of the City knows the answer to that question. If he didn't share with you, not my problem."

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

I didn't hear Edward bang on the door, I felt the vibration of it. Rick glanced at the doors, then pressed his hand on a panel he'd been standing in front of; it was a fingerprint scanner. The doors leading farther into the penthouse whooshed open.