Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 47

I WAS BACK in one of the Vegas interrogation rooms, but this time I was on the other side of the table. Paula Chu was on the wrong side of the table this time. She was the weretiger who had so obligingly knelt in her front yard, waiting for the police to take her into custody. She had also been the serious girlfriend of Martin Bendez. Coincidence? Police don't believe in it. Coincidence is just a crime you haven't figured out yet, unless it's not. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it not true.

Paula Chu wasn't much taller than me, maybe five-five or five-six. Her white-blond hair was cut short, but she had enough little tufts of hair artfully sticking out here and there that I was betting she'd have wavy hair if she let it grow out. Her eyebrows matched the hair, and her eyes were the palest blue I'd ever seen, almost white. She wore makeup that complemented the paleness of her skin and accented her eyes, dragging what color she could out of them. She was so overall pale that without eye makeup she'd have looked unfinished, like dough that needed baking. With the makeup she was lovely and delicate as the first blush of spring.

The lovely eyes with their uptilted edges had nothing delicate in them when she glared at me across the table. Why wasn't she mourning her dead boyfriend? Easy: she didn't know he was dead yet. She'd gone into this room before the fireworks. I sat across from her and knew that the man she loved was dead, and I didn't tell her. I was saving it for when I thought it might gain me something in the questioning. Did that make me a bastard? Probably, but after the crime scene I'd just seen, I could live with that.

"Are you just going to sit there and stare at me?" she asked at last. Her voice dripped with hostility.

"We're waiting for someone," I said, and even managed a smile, though I wasn't able to push it all the way up into my eyes.

Edward was leaning against the far wall. He smiled wonderfully at her. "Sorry for the inconvenience, Ms. Chu, but you know how it is."

"No," she said, "I don't know how it is. I know that the police put surveillance on my house, and came and dragged me away. Apparently, I'm a suspect in the slaughter of the SWAT officers and our local executioner."

I reacted to it, just a tightening of the shoulders, but she felt it, saw it. My pulse went up just a notch. "Who told you that?"

She smiled at me. Her smile didn't reach her eyes, either. "So that is why I'm here."

"We didn't say that, Ms. Chu," Edward said, in his happy Ted voice.

"You didn't have to; she reacted to it." She gave me the full weight of those pale eyes.

I stared into those pale tiger eyes in the human face and felt a thrill of fear, or adrenaline? She meant to spook me, but adrenaline isn't good for you when you carry beasts inside you like furry hitchhikers.

I'd been shielding as hard as I could. Hard enough that she hadn't picked up on the fact that I wasn't completely human. Interesting to know that I could shield well enough to pass for prey to Paula Chu. But that tiny spurt of adrenaline was enough to make the white tigress get to her feet and gaze up the long distance of that interior landscape.

It was Chu's turn to tense. My turn to see it and give her a satisfied smile. Her voice was even a little shaky around the edges. "You can't be one of us."

"Why not?" I asked.

She touched her white hair. "You aren't pure."

"I survived an attack," I said. Which was true; if she thought that meant I was a full-blown weretiger, not my bad that she misunderstood.

Her face was instantly scornful. "Then you don't understand. It's not your fault, but you can't understand."

"Help me understand," I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "I thought that if you became a shapeshifter, they took away your badge."

"I'm with the preternatural branch of the Marshals Service. The rules are a little more lax."

She kept giving me that suspicious look. Her dainty nose flared as she sniffed the air. "You don't just smell of tiger; you smell of our clan. You smell like white tiger. That is not possible."

I shrugged. "Why isn't it possible?"

"You should smell like tiger, but only regular, orange. One of us could attack you and make you a tiger, but you'd still not be clan."

"You mean I wouldn't turn into a white tiger, even if a white tiger were my attacker."

She nodded, and she was puzzling over me. "Exactly."

The white tigress had risen to her feet and was beginning to trot up that long, dark path through the forest that was not, in a place that only dreams should have been real. I had concentrated and gotten her to slow, then stop. She began to pace around the path, like something caged. But she had stopped, and that was all I cared about.

Chu leaned a little closer over the table. "I smell white tiger. You smell like clan. Are you hiding from us? Did you dye your hair and put contacts in? Your skin is white enough to pass."

"Sorry, but I'm all natural." I wanted to glance back and see Edward in his corner, but didn't dare. I knew he was there and would help if I needed it, but he was mostly there in case Paula Chu tried to go all tiger on our asses. We had been told to wait for Detective Ed Morgan before questioning her about the crimes. So far, we hadn't broken that rule. Just two shapeshifters talking shop.

She half-rose from her chair. The manacles kept her hands from rising and kept all of her from standing completely, but Edward still said, "Sit down, Ms. Chu, you'll be more comfortable that way."

She gave a sound that might have been a laugh, but was all bitter. She let herself fall back into the chair. "Yeah, I guess it is more comfortable." She stared at me, and I felt the first trickle of her energy like a hand searching in the dark for another hand to hold.

"Don't try to read my energy with yours," I said, and I tried to shut the shields back as tight as when I'd started the interview. But the white tigress was still pacing on the path. She couldn't get past my orders to stay where she was, but I didn't have enough control to shut her down completely. That knowledge made my heart speed just a little. It let the tigress inside me start moving down the path again. It made Paula Chu take in a great, noisy breath of air. Her eyes actually fluttered closed, and she shivered in her chair.

The white tigress inside me began to hurry along the path. I could try to tough it out, or I could leave the room. Normally, I'd have toughed it out, but I couldn't afford to fall to the ground and start twitching. I'd had a near-change cause blood to flow from under my fingernails. If I did that where the Vegas police could see me, being kicked off this case was the least that would happen.

I stood up. The tigress was running now, so fast that the black stripes vanished into the white blur of her.

"Anita, are you all right?" Edward asked, moving a little away from the wall.

I shook my head. "Need some air," I said.

The woman on the other side of the table opened her eyes and said, "You're powerful, but you're new. You don't have the control yet."

I went to the door and banged on it. "Hit the buzzer," Edward said. He'd moved closer to me and to the suspect.

I fumbled for the buzzer. I heard it sound. Nothing happened. Someone had to let us out. Until this moment, I'd been okay with that. I pictured a brick wall across the path of the tiger in my head. She stopped running and snarled at the wall.

My pulse was still thudding in my throat, but there was relief under the taste of my own heartbeat. I could do this; I'd been practicing for months so I could control my beasts and travel out of town without a posse of wereanimals to help me control all that internal strife. What was it about these tigers that made the control so much harder? Or was it simply being too far away from Jean-Claude and our power base? That thought sped my pulse up again. What if I couldn't control my powers if I was too far away from... my master? I really wished I hadn't thought of that.

The tiger in my head hunkered down, pushing her body against the ground of that impossible place. I felt her body tense for the spring and realized my mistake too late. Tigers can jump eighteen to twenty feet vertically. My brick wall hadn't been tall enough. She was over the wall in one muscular bound, and running full out down the path. If she hit the end of it, she'd hit me. It was like being hit by a small truck from the inside out.

It was Paula Chu who said, "You are in control, not the beast. That must always be so."

"It's your energy that's fucking with me." I put another wall in the tiger's path. This one was metal, tall and shiny, so tall that it lifted through the trees. She wouldn't jump this one.

"I am not doing enough to cause this much trouble, even among the newly found."

I shook my head, still not looking at her. "I don't know what it is about your clan, but your energy fucks with me. It just does."

"That would only be true if you were a born member of our clan, lost and now found, but if your coloring is real, then you cannot be pure born."

The white tiger in my head snarled and paced before the steel wall. She bared those glistening fangs and roared at me. The sound reverberated along my spine as if she'd turned me into some human-sized tuning fork.

"I hear your call," she said, and her voice was strained.

"I'm not doing it," I said. I hit the buzzer again, but I knew now. Shaw, or someone, was watching. They wanted to see what would happen to me if I stayed in here long enough. If I changed shape for real, I'd lose my badge. The only thing that had saved it was that I had too many types of lycanthropy, and they couldn't prove that I was a real shapeshifter. Shaw would love proving that. I wouldn't just be off this case-I'd be off every case, forever.

"You are calling for aid. It is a distress call, but only our queens can make the call that loud."

I tried to make the roaring tiger inside me be quiet, but she wouldn't. She just kept calling for help. Shit.

"What do I do to stop it?" I asked.

"I can help you calm it, but I would have to touch you to do it."

"Bad idea," Edward said, and took a step closer to me.

I shook my head and looked at him. "If she can help me?"

"And if she makes it worse?" he said.

We looked at each other. The intercom that fed into the room came on. "What the fuck are you doing in there, Blake? The other tigers are going apeshit."

"Let me out," I said, "and it'll get better."

"You cannot stop it on your own," Paula said.

"Fuck you," I said.

"Let me quiet you. It is the way of tigers to calm the young and the inexperienced."

I'd had Crispin do it for me once, when things were much worse than this. But... I did not know her, and she was the dead bad guy's main squeeze. Would she help me, or hurt me?

"Let me help you, Marshal. One of our people attacked you, and for that our entire clan owes you a debt."

"It wasn't a white tiger," I said, but I'd moved away from the door and was closer to the table.

"Anita," Edward said, and he reached out, then let his hand drop. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No," I said, but I kept moving toward her.

"If it wasn't a white tiger, then who attacked you?" she asked.

"Yellow," I said, and I was standing beside her, staring down into those blue eyes. Just that made the tiger inside me stop screaming. It was as if just being closer to another white tiger soothed my beast.

"Yellow tiger," she said, and frowned.

I nodded.

"The yellow clan has been dead for centuries. They do not exist."

"She was an animal to call for a really old vampire."

"What happened to her?" Paula asked.

"She's dead."

"You had to kill her."

I nodded.

"But a yellow tiger attacked you," she said.

"You say it like that makes a difference. What difference does it make what color tiger attacked me?"

"The yellow, or golden, clan was supreme to all the other clans. They ruled the earth and all the energies on it, including the rest of the clans."

"News to me," I said.

She shrugged as much as the chains would let her. "What good does it do to talk about something that is lost? But if a yellow tiger attacked you, then it might explain why you seem to have so much power."

"She was yellow," I said. I turned to Edward.

He knew what I wanted without my having to say anything. "She was pale yellow with darker stripes."

"You were there?"

"Yes," he said.

"Was anyone else attacked?" she asked.

"Yes, but he tests clean for lycanthropy. I'm the only one that got lucky." Just standing next to her made it easier to breathe. Maybe the idea that I could travel without my own cadre of wereanimals was just not true. Maybe I'd never be able to travel alone. Shit. If that were true, I might have to give up the federal badge anyway. What good was an executioner who couldn't travel to where the bad guys were committing their crimes?

The intercom sounded again. "The other tigers are calm again. What are you doing in there, Blake?" It was Shaw, just like I'd known it would be. I was sorry his wife had run off and shacked up with a shapeshifter, but it wasn't my fault.

Edward went to the intercom on our side and spoke. "We got the tiger energy toned down, that's all."

"What's Blake doing?" Shaw asked.

"Her job," Edward said, and let go of the button.

I looked into those strangely soothing tiger eyes in the woman's face. "Did you know what Martin was involved in?"

She blinked up at me. Her face told me nothing, but her lips parted, her breath a little faster. Was that because she knew something, or because I mentioned her boyfriend? Or was it just being in cuffs from top to bottom and being questioned by the police? That tends to make people nervous, even overreact. It's one of the reasons I prefer to question people at home or some place more casual. But it was too late for casual today. Too late for so many things.

I was staring into her eyes as she said, "No." I didn't believe her. I wasn't sure why, but looking into those pale blue kitty-cat eyes, I knew she was lying. It wasn't metaphysical powers. It was the same gut reaction that any cop gets after a while. You just begin to know. Now, maybe she wasn't lying to hide something. Maybe she was lying because she was scared, or just because she could. People lie for the stupidest reasons. But I went with her lying to hide something. She was lying because she had information we needed. That was helpful. That gave us somewhere to go and someone to question. That gave us something useful for all the new deaths I'd seen today. If Paula Chu knew something, then maybe the officers who'd died, and the SWAT who was in critical condition in the hospital... Maybe it all wouldn't have been for nothing.

I realized, staring down into her lying eyes, that I no longer believed that. Even if she knew everything, the fucking secret to the secret sauce, and would tell us all of it, it didn't matter. It didn't matter to the families of the slain officers. It didn't matter to the member of SWAT who might never walk again, if he even woke up. That it mattered was a lie that we told ourselves so we could keep moving and not want to eat our gun.

Closure was a word therapists used to make you believe that the pain would stop, and that punishing the bad guy, or finding out why, would bring you peace. It was the biggest lie of all.

"Anita," Edward said, "you all right?" He was closer to me than he had been, all the way on the side of the table with Paula and me. I hadn't heard, felt, or seen him move.

I shook my head. "No, I'm not all right." In my head I thought, I am off my game. What was wrong with me?

Edward took my arm and moved me back from the woman. The farther away, the clearer my head, but the tiger inside me was still there, crouched on the other side of the metal wall in my head. But she was lying down; only the end of that black-tipped tail twitching let me know how irritated she was with me.

The door opened and Chief Detective Ed Morgan came through smiling. He was playing those big brown eyes and those nice-guy good looks for all he was worth. He just radiated charm. Oh, right, we'd been waiting for him. Hadn't Shaw warned us not to ask any questions directly related to the case until Morgan arrived? Guess he had. Fuck it.

"Good afternoon, Paula, may I call you Paula? I'm Ed." He set files down on the table between them, took the chair I'd been sitting in, and smiled at her. You'd have thought Edward and I didn't exist.

"I can take it from here, Marshals. Undersheriff Shaw would like to speak with you." Morgan smiled, broad enough to flash dimples, but in the depths of those brown eyes was an unfriendly spark. I thought we were going to get yelled at. Great.

Edward kept his grip on my arm, as if he didn't trust what I'd do. If there'd been a mirror to look into, I'd have checked what my expression was, but there was nothing but walls. They didn't have enough interrogation rooms with those big shiny two-way mirrored windows, so they'd put the woman in one where they couldn't watch her as well. There was a camera on her, but she didn't rate the window. She was the only one with a real connection to the dead weretiger, and she hadn't rated the best room, though she now had one of their best interrogators. I smelled office politics.

Edward led me toward the still-open door. Whatever he saw or felt from me, or in me, was making him nervous. I didn't feel that scary. I didn't feel much of anything. Again, there was that little thought, What is wrong with me?

He eased me out the open door. I glanced back and found Paula Chu staring at me. The moment I met her eyes, the tigress in me stood up. She roared again, but this time the metal wall trembled with the sound, as if her roar had hit it like some huge gong. I staggered, and Edward had to steady me.

He leaned in and whispered, "What is wrong?"

"Not sure, but I need to get away from these tigers."

Morgan said, "Close the door on your way out. Paula and I will get along just fine, won't we?" He was turned away from us, but I knew he was wasting that brilliant smile on her. She didn't even look at him. Her eyes were all for me.

I pushed through the door, and only Edward's grip on my arm kept me from starting to run. My breathing was trying to speed up. My pulse was already racing. I could feel the other tigers inside the interrogation rooms. I could feel them. The only wereanimals I should have been able to feel like that were ones that I was metaphysically bound to, or that Jean-Claude was bound to. I was not close enough in any way to the white tigers of Vegas to sense them this strongly. Something was wrong.

Edward's fingers dug into my arm. Dug in enough that I would have protested the pain, but it helped clear my head. A few bruises were worth it, and the moment the pain helped, I knew something else.

I whispered to him, "I'm being messed with."

"Vampire?" He made it a question.

"Unless the white tiger queen can do shit that I've only seen vampires do before, yes."

"Vamp or tiger?" he asked, voice low.

We were getting a few glances from the police officers we passed. Did they see the bruising grip, or the whispering? Or were the rumors so good that we'd just become a curiosity?

I glared at a couple of uniforms who were staring. "Like what you see?"

"Leave it, Anita." Edward just kept us moving past them. He loosened his grip on my arm a little, and instantly I could feel the tigers behind us in the rooms. I could almost see them looking up and trying to see me.

I leaned in, and whispered, "Tighten the grip."

"What?"

"The pain helps keep my head clear."

He went back to bruising my arm, and we kept walking toward the doors. I could see the press of the hot, white sunlight against the doors.

"If the sunlight helps..." he said.

I said, "Then it's vampire."

"If it doesn't..." he said.

"Tiger," I said.

He didn't even bother to say yes. We both knew what we were doing, and why. Bernardo called from behind us, "Where's the fire?"

Edward looked behind, but I didn't. I had my eyes on the goal of the doors. I concentrated on the pressure of Edward's fingers on my arm and the sunlight just ahead. He called back, "We need some air." Bernardo, and Olaf if he was with him, would know that we weren't moving that fast for a little air. It was the shorthand of people that knew each other. They knew Edward better than they knew me, but shorthand for him in that moment worked just dandy for all of us.

Bernardo and Olaf caught up with us as we got to the outer lobby area. Victor stood up from where he'd been sitting. The moment I saw him, the tigress in me roared again, and this time the metal shield that I'd built in her path wavered like metal water. It didn't break, but it bent.

Edward didn't even slow, but waved Victor off, and kept us heading for the door. Bernardo had the door open and waiting for us, as if he'd picked up on the urgency. Olaf trailed after all of us, not helping but not hindering, either. Right now, I'd take not hindering.

The tigress inside me leapt onto the warped metal and began to try to climb. "Hurry," I said.

Edward pulled me through the doors. The heat hit me first, breath-stealing, like walking into an oven. The tiger didn't hesitate. She wanted out.

Then the light hit me, and it was like some hot, white searchlight. It slashed through a darkness that I hadn't been able to see. A darkness that held Her. She stood in the dark and shrieked at me. But the sunlight cut her off, and all I had to fight now was the weretiger that had managed to climb my shields and was running full tilt toward the surface of me. I didn't know why Marmee Noir liked tigers so much, but she had done something to weaken my defenses.

I tried to put up another shield, and I couldn't. Marmee Noir was gone for now, thrust out by the sun, but what she'd done inside me was still there. It was still crippling me.

Edward still had a light grip on my arm. "Anita, are you all right?"

"The vampire's gone, but she's done something to me." The tiger was running full out, a blur of white and black; if she hit the surface of me, the least bad thing that was about to happen was I'd fall on the ground and almost change. Worst case, whatever Marmee had done to me would make me tiger for real.

"What has happened?" Olaf asked.

"I've got a better question, what is happening?" Bernardo asked.

If I'd had a wereleopard or a werewolf, or even a werelion, I could have distracted the tiger inside me, turned the beasts against each other, or even a tiger of a different color. I stood in the heat and the light, and I needed things that I couldn't explain to the others.

"I can help you calm your tiger." Victor's voice came from behind us. He'd followed us into the light.

"I don't think so," Edward said.

"No," I said. "I mean, yes."

Edward looked at me. "Anita, he almost brought your beast earlier."

"That was an accident," Victor said, "but I am trained to help the females of my clan keep their human form."

Edward drew me closer to himself. But we were out of time; the tiger was about to hit the surface of me. "Let him try, Edward, or I could be tiger for real."

I reached for Victor, and Edward let me go, reluctantly. Victor put his hands on either side of my face, the way that Crispin had done when I'd first met him in North Carolina. Victor threw his colored glasses away, so that I gazed into those pale blue eyes, naked to the light. I fell into those eyes, and the tiger slowed inside me. It didn't stop, but it slowed.

He lowered his face toward mine.

I sensed movement to the side and caught the tall, dark presence of Olaf. Edward stopped him from touching us. "Let him," Edward said.

Victor kissed me. He pressed his mouth over mine. With Crispin I had forced my beast into him and brought his own tiger, but now Victor breathed his power into me. Not his beast, but his power. That skin-tingling, breath-stealing power, like nothing I'd ever felt from any lycanthrope except his own mother.

The tiger inside me paused, then started trotting again, so close, so close to being out.

Victor drew back enough to say, "You must accept my power willingly. You are too strong for me to force your beast into stillness."

The tigress was at the surface of me, like she was gazing up from the bottom of some pool, and I was that pool. Always before the beasts had slammed into me, as if I were a solid object to tear through, but now I was water, and the tigress hesitated.

"Look at me, not your beast, Anita." He drew my attention back to his eyes, his face.

The tigress scraped a claw down the underneath of the water that was me, and only Victor's hands kept me standing. Always before it had hurt more, but now I knew, absolutely knew, that this new watery barrier would not hold the beast. Whatever Marmee Noir had done, she wanted me to shift. She wanted me to be tiger. I didn't know what was happening, but I knew that anything she wanted, I shouldn't give her.

The tiger took another pass, and I swear I felt my skin move with it. "Save me," I whispered.

"Let me in," he whispered back, as he pressed his mouth on mine one more time.

I wasn't sure how to do it, so I dropped the shields to my beasts. The tigress let out a roar of triumph, in the same instant that Victor's power smashed into her. She screamed at its touch, but the power drove her back. Victor's power was a warm, living wind that chased her back, gently but inexorably. Then, suddenly, she was gone, and I was alone in my skin. Alone in my skin, but still wrapped in Victor's arms.

He drew away from the kiss, but kept his arms on me, as if he wasn't sure I could stand. Me either.

"You're bleeding," Bernardo said, softly.

I looked down and couldn't see anything under the vest, but Victor had blood on the lower part of his body. "I don't think it's mine," he said.

Edward moved up to block the view. "We need to get out of here."

"You make friends too damn fast for comfort." Hooper was there, with some of his team.

Victor whispered, "Can you stand?"

I thought about it, then nodded.

Victor stepped away from me, standing so that the cops might not see the blood on his front. I said, "Sorry you don't like how I make friends, Sergeant." I meant that, actually. I liked Hooper and would have liked to keep his good opinion, but... The most important thing was to get the hell away from all the other cops and see how badly I was hurt.

"I'll be your friend." This from Georgie.

"Sorry, my dance card is a little full."

"No fucking joke." He gave me that look that you never want to see from a man who is supposed to be a coworker and has never been your boyfriend. His too-young face didn't carry the look well.

But Hooper was giving me a look I wanted even less. He'd narrowed his eyes and was trying to see around the blocking bodies of the other men. He started toward us. Edward started us toward the car. Victor came with us. We did our best to keep the blood out of sight. It didn't show on my black-on-black, but Victor's pale shirt showed the blood scarlet.

Hooper sent the other men inside, then kept walking toward us. Sanchez caught up with him, kept him talking. It looked like they were arguing, but it gave us enough time to get me in the back of the car. Victor rode shotgun so he could direct Bernardo to the doctor. Edward rode in back with me, and Olaf, too. We tried to get Olaf to drive, but he simply would not agree to driving. Hooper had broken away from Sanchez and was moving our way again. We were out of time to argue.

"Drive," Edward said.

Bernardo drove.